There was a rule that actively encouraged this in the Wolverhampton League, which existed until a few years ago.Kevin Thurlow wrote:What annoys me is people conceding matches when they expect to lose, especially if they will have a longish journey to do so.
My club made the mistake of winning the league on tie-break, gamepoints - after a team defaulted against us. So we got 6 gamepoints and won the league. Amidst cries of foul, the tie-break was amended such that if Team A tied with Team B, and Team B beat Team C by default, then the gamepoints didn't count for Team B, and the gamepoints scored by Team A in the match against Team C wouldn't count either.
The impact of this a few seasons later was that Team B defaulted against Team A mid-season, and at the end of the season, Team A and Team B were tied on matchpoints. Team B won the league on tie-break. However, had Team B turned up to play Team A and lost the match by any scoreline, Team A would have won the league on tie-break, because then Team A could have counted the gamepoints.
To a disinterested observer, this was hilarious. If Team A v Team B was the last match of the season though, they could have just defaulted to win the league, rather than go through the rigmarole of actually bothering to play.
It was a comically misjudged rule, which survived for another season but they've now finally changed it to a playoff, I think, which is much more agreeable.