The Hugh Paton is played at the beginning of the season and is available to all curling members. Teams are drawn by the Match Committee and are grouped in sections as appropriate to the number of entries. A round robin is played in each section to declare a section winner. The section winners then engage in a straight knockout to decide the winner of the Hugh Paton Trophy.
Round robin, 3 games, possible dates : September 29th, September 30th, October 1st, October 6th. Playoffs : Semi final October 7th at 6PM, Final October 8th at 6PM updated FINAL OCT. 7th AT 8:30PM.
RULES
Tournament format
Teams are divided in one (1) pools of four (4) and two (2) pools of three (3). An intra-section Round Robin is played for the groups A (teams 1-4), and a cross-pool preliminary round is played for the groupe C and D (teams 5-7 and 8-10). The 4 best teams overall will qualify for the playoffs.
Length of games
All games will be eight (8) ends unless the time violation comes into play. All scheduled games must be played. A team may concede at any time after the conclusion of the fourth (4th) end. The last rock of the 7th end must be played (released) before the clock is at 00:00:00.
During the playoffs games, if games are tied after the completion of the eighth end, extra ends will be played until a winning team is decided. The direction in which the stones are thrown must be modified. Ties are allowed during the round robin games.
Last rock advantage
During the preliminary round, the hammer in the first end will be determined by a coin toss. For the playoff games (semi-finals and finals), last rock advantage will be awarded to the team with the best ranking (Q1-Q4).
Team ranking
After the conclusion of the preliminary round, teams will be ranked from 1 to 10 as follows: Overall win-tie-loss record (2 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, 0 point for a loss), Head-to-head results of implicated teams (if the tied teams ALL played against eachother), Point differential. The four (4) teams will be qualified for the playoffs and will be identified Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4.
No tick zone
If, prior to the delivery of the sixth stone of an end, a delivered stone causes, either directly or indirectly, an opposition stone in the Free Guard Zone (FGZ) which is touching the centre line and is moved to an off-centre line position and/or out of the FGZ, the non-offending team has the option to: (i) remove the delivered stone from play, and replace all stones that were displaced to their positions prior to the violation taking place; or (ii) leave all stones where they came to rest.
Spares
If a player can’t play a game, the involved team must choose a spare (any RMCC member). For this competition, the spare can play any position.