I think we all might be assuming that the UKU received large numbers of bids. It would be nice to hear some stats from the DOC as to the number of bids received and whether there were any bids for tours on their own rather than combined.
Jon Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: BD, This weekend at Bristol saw the following situation: A tour 16 teams 8 pitches 6 * 90 mins = 540 mins of pitch time per team B & Women's Tour combined 44 teams ~10 or 11 pitches - giving benefit of the doubt for the two pitches lost to weather (approximate as a few women's games where played on the A tour pitches) 8*45 mins = 360 minutes of pitch time per team. So the A tour teams used twice as many pitches per team than the B & Women's tours and got 50% more pitch time yet the cost of entry was the same for all teams. How can this be acceptable? By Adam's own admission this years Tour 1 exceeded the venues capacity. Doesn't the UKU have a responsibility to prevent this from happening? It should have been obvious at the bidding stage that you it is hard to run a good quality tournament for sixty teams on 18 pitches. Furthermore that if you insist on using nearly half of those pitches for only a quarter of the teams then it is impossible to run a good quality tournament for the remaining three quarters of the teams. I don't blame Adam or Matt for trying to make as much money as possible with as many teams as they think they can fit. I'm sure their bid indicated the number of pitches and the maximum number of teams they would have in each division. They made their bid and it was accepted, fair enough. However shouldn't the UKU have some minimum standard for tournaments? At the bidding stage shouldn't they have refused the bid for 60 teams and instead insisted that the tournament be A & B tours only then found another venue for the women's tour OR insisted that the tournament be A tour, women's tour and only a 16 or 20 team B tour? >From my experience playing, running and scheduling outdoor tournaments it seems clear to me that the absolute minimum standard for an outdoor tournament should be one pitch between every four teams. In practice, due to the format, this is often not enough for a B tour event with 32 teams. It will most likely still result in 45 minute games which I don't find acceptable. A more realistic minimum for serious, competitive tournaments should be 1.5 pitches per 4 teams or 12 pitches for a 32 team B tour. With 12 pitches you can schedule the tournament so that each game is at least 60 minutes and probably 75 minutes or better. Why does the UKU not insist on such minimum standards when accepting bids? If part of the purpose of the B tour is to determine the teams to be promoted to the A tour shouldn't the later stage B tour games (at a minimum) be similar if not the same in length as the A tour games the promoted teams will play at the next event? If the UKU is going to accept bids where the pitch time for the A tour is so much more than for the B tour shouldn't they insist that the A tour teams pay for that privilege? Can we expect a similarly shocking lack of pitch time at the B tour events in the future? Can they UKU or the TD's of the remaining three tours inform us how many pitches they have for their events and what average length of games can be expected? JP __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list BritDisc@near.me.uk http://zion.ranulf.net/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list BritDisc@near.me.uk http://zion.ranulf.net/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp
