Four rules, and the reason for each

These are the standing rules for the guides. Each was written after getting something wrong in front of somebody who knew better, which is the usual way rules arrive.

One - a claim is checked against a document or it comes out

For anything tied to a particular event that means the organiser's own entry pack and published conditions, not a recollection of how last year went.

The reason is that conditions move quietly. An arrival window can shift by an hour with nothing announced, and the entrant standing at the barrier carries the consequence.

Two - where practice differs, the text says it differs

Clubs run their pitches their own way and every event writes its own conditions.

Presenting one club's habit as the general rule would send a reader to a gate at eight in the morning with the wrong expectation. It reads less confidently. It is far more use.

Three - nothing at all is recommended by name

No trailer, no insurer, no polish, no club, no event.

A name ages, and a name reads as an endorsement whatever is written around it. Where the choice genuinely matters, the guide hands over the questions to ask instead of an answer to buy.

Four - corrections are printed, dated, under the piece

Editing in silence makes a site look as though it was never mistaken, which is a lie told by arrangement.

So a change of substance gets a line beneath the text saying what it used to say. The date on top of a guide is the day somebody last read the whole thing through.

Organisers: if a page describes your conditions wrongly, say so and it is fixed with a dated line underneath. Quicker than sorting it out at a barrier in July.