Jamie Cross wrote: > Seriously though, the way seedings etc are worked out have been public for
> ages, and this style of last minute critisism is ill-timed and reasonably > pointless. If you have issues with the rules, raise them well in advance > of Tour 1, so there is time for discussion, change and implementation. > Seems sensible to me but I must admit a lack of the foresight displayed by > some of the previous correspondents. You don't consider the day that the seedings are announced and the format first released to be an appropriate time to have this discussion? If the TD had gotten this information out earlier we could have discussed it earlier. Tom White wrote: > It was real tough for smash and grab last year to get into the A tour > after a really poor result at the previous nationals. Thats why we worked > as hard as poss last nationals to get a good seeding for this year's tour. But isn't this exactly part of my point. If the seedings for the tour where based on the previous years overall tour standings then S&G wouldn't have been seeded in the B tour in the first place. Jolyon Thompson wrote: > The recent increase in standard across the whole of the UK ultimate scene > means that more and more teams find themselves at the bottom A and top B > level and have little to choose between them. This is great news for the > future of the sport and increased competition within the UK. So if the good competition now extends into the teams around 20th overall (as opposed to what you to be a pretty big split between the top 8 and the rest only a few years ago) why do we have this artificial split around 16? The entire point of the split of the A & B tours was to facilitate the use of smaller, higher quality venues. This came at the expense of what was regarded by everyone as an excellent system for determining the top 16 teams at each tour. However despite the split was still use the same old venues and are left with only the disadvantage of an inflexible, unfair tour structure. The other noticeable effect of the tour split is that the A tour teams now get at least 50% more pitch time than the B tour teams but pay the same amount for entry. I'm sure that seems like a great deal for those A tour teams but it's a rubbish deal for the B tour and Women's tour teams that are subsidising their tournament. Don't we have it the wrong way wrong round? If anyone should be subsidising any one else shouldn't it be the A tour teams subsidising the B tour? That way the larger teams with their more committed players support the growth of the game by making entry to these events easier for the lower teams? Another justification for the A tour was that it wasn't worth their time for the top teams to play teams as low as 16 let alone 48th. This is a fair point. The majority of teams will learn the most from playing close competitive games against similarly skilled opponents. The occasion butt kicking from a much better team or the handing out a butt kicking to a significantly worse team can also teach you a lot to but you don't need many of those type of games in a season. My problem is that the gap between the top and bottom of the B tour is way bigger that the gap between the top and bottom of the A tour. So if the top teams get a format that means they don't have to 'waste their time' with 'meaningless' games why shouldn't the teams in the B tour get the same consideration? It also seems to me that automatic relegation/promotion from the A and B tour seems less than ideal. Why not simply play relegation and promotion games to actually see who is better? I recognize that nothing can be done about Tour 1. If I had spent less time organizing Student tournaments and writing a thesis I might have put forward these ideas sooner. However with the above points in mind I'd like to suggest a change to the tour format for Tour 2: A tour - top 16: they play what ever format is considered appropriate culminating in quarters, semis, finals for 1st and more importantly 9th place. B tour - 17-32: Four pools of four, crossover round between 2nd and 3rd seeds in each pool followed by quarters, semis, finals C tour - 33-48: same format as the B tour. PLUS after the quarter final rounds in each tour you would play four crossover/promotion/relegation games between the bottom and top four teams of each tour. A/B tour games would be 13v20, 14v19, 15v18, 16v17. Similarly for B/C tour games. Such a format would be no harder to schedule that the previous ones. It has the advantage that each of the A, B & C tours would consist of many more meaningful games between closely matched teams. The crossover rounds would mean that as many as four teams could get promoted/relegated between tours and a team originally seeded in the B tour could potentially finish as high as 13th in the A tour. (Thus teams wouldn't have to suffer the fate of Sheffield Steal last year of never getting a true overall finishing position in the tour due to their best possible finish of 17th at Tour 1). The format for the A tour was changed half way through the season by a vote of the captains if I remember correctly. Who would welcome such a tour format? What would it take to get the format I've suggested above implemented for Tour 2? Cheers JP __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list BritDisc@near.me.uk http://zion.ranulf.net/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp
