After some debate and 'opinion collection' it has become clear that results from next weekend's Mixed Nationals Tournament need to be used as the selection criteria for teams going to the European Club Championships next June. Reasons: Europeans are taking place in June (not in August as with World tournaments) and so a qualifying tournament in April would be unworkable, as teams will need to have entered long before then. Nationals is the obvious choice for selection of international slots. Selection is done this way with the Open and Women's division. Although there are additional factors in selecting mixed teams (such as teams that may split to play Open and Womens), Nationals remains the most fair way to select teams for a CLUB championships. Dont Panic: We don't know how many slots will be available for Mixed. Thanks to the strong performance of the National Squad, we can expect to do well- but there is no indication of how large the competition will be, and so how many teams will be invited. Qualification places that are not used by teams will be 'passed down' the results table until a team takes them up. IMPOrTANT- Rosters ARE NOT FROZEN for Europeans (as far as BUF is concerned). If you started up a development team but want to play internationally (and are good enough) you can go join a team that has qualified. MOST IMPORTANT- Qualifying teams that elect to go to Europeans MUST send at least seven of the players who played to get the qualification. (This is stated in the original Mixed Series description and rules.) For example- say team X qualifies, but all of team X's player elect to play Open and Womens with other teams except for two players. Those remianing two players can not form a 'new' team under team X's name in order to go to Europeans. I know this is late notice- but we only found out about European Clubs in August. I had no idea at the start of the Mixed Series that this would become an issue. Please accept my apologies for any problems caused. Talk to me if you have any huge problems. Nancy Stebbing National Mixed Co-ordinator
