The system of club membership is quite complicated in many instances, and if you want to study the rules and try and interpret them, you can find the rules on a link at the Lancashire AA site - good luck!

But just to give you a potted version, every club athlete is a first claim member of their chosen club, and can compete for them as an individual or a team member.

So does an athlete have only one club? Not necessarily! There are also other forms of membership.

Second Claim Membership is when an athlete may join another club. Perhaps they train occasionally with them, and want to make a formal link with that club.

But as a 2nd claim member, the athlete cannot compete for that club, except in rare circumstances.

Higher Competition membership allows athletes from one club to participate for a second club in a higher tier of competition that is not available to them with their 1st claim club, but this only applies to track and field and U20 athletes and above.

To make it even more complicated there are then also composite teams, where a few clubs may come together to enter a league that they would not be able to take part in individually and I won't even go in to the subject of club affiliations to the various athletic disciplines.

So an athlete could and quite often does have several clubs and keeping track on who is eligible to compete for which club and in which events is quite impossible to monitor effectively.

So, you are an athlete at a club, but things are not quite right for you there. How do you change clubs?

Quite simple, you resign in writing from the club concerned, and then look for a club that suits your needs better.

The main pitfall here though is that any athlete moving clubs is automatically suspended from team competition for 6 months, except for certain circumstances such as junior athletes at U13 & U15 level, or athletes where they can provide mitigation to a committee of appeal.

Picture the scene, an athlete is part of a club and training squad and worked under the same coach for some years.

The coach retires, the club has no new coach and the training partners drift away.

To move clubs and compete in team competition, the athlete has to go through an appeal process called claiming hardship in order to be able to avoid the 6 month suspension from team competition.

There is no guarantee that the suspension will be lifted or relaxed.

This system of athlete transfers is partly there to stop athletes changing clubs regularly to "trophy hunt", but there are other reasons to make athletes pause before they move.

Most clubs put a lot of time and effort in to athlete development, and it's very frustrating as a coach and club official to see athletes move on to what they feel is a bigger and better club for them, when you have put a lot of hard work in for them to get them to where they are.

The automatic suspension does tend to make athletes think before they take this extremely important decision.

In my opinion the system is cumbersome and unfair. Many athletes, coaches and club officials are unsure exactly how the system should work.

There should be a far simpler way of handling the movement of athletes.

Any athlete should be allowed to change clubs with immediate effect. From the date that they resign from their old club, they should be free to join another club.

I would put one restriction in place for the athlete so that they cannot compete in any competition that season in which they have already competed in for their old club.

It seems illogical that it is more difficult for a local 45 minute 10km road runner to change clubs and be allowed to compete for the club, than it is for a professional footballer to move clubs.

I would then address the 1st claim / second claim issue. Athletes should only be allowed to compete for their first team club.

This would be clear for everyone. Athletes then would have to pick the club that best suited their needs.

Second claim membership / Higher Competition membership etc should then be abolished and a non-competing / social membership tier should be introduced.

Then finally club affiliation - check out Rule 2(4). All clubs should be affiliated to all disciplines.

This would greatly simplify the system that we now have, making it clearer and fairer for all and easier to manage