Hi Si and others,
It is true that some (one?) team had to play 5 games back to back at
MT1. The reason for this is as follows:
1. The tournament was over subscribed and we had to make a choice as to
whether to reject teams or to change the schedule to include all teams. We
chose the latter.
2. This was a Tour 1. Seeding the tournament was undoubtedly going to be
problematic given the large changes between teams in the mixed division
from one year to the next. We decided to do a schedule which was as open
as realistically possible, in order to dull the effect of the seeding
process.
The downside was that we knew that it was possible that teams would have to
play 3 matches in a row, some would almost certainly play 4 in a row
(though it depended on results) and it was possible that teams could have
to play 5 in a row if results were to fall a particular way.
Some of our expectations were as follows:
We felt that since games had been shortened (only an hour rather than
100mins in the Open Tour) fatigue per game was less of an issue than it may
appear.
With the fairly open style of tournament it was expected that some games
would be shorter than an hour, as we expected some games to be fairly one
sided.
The weather was expected to be unseasonably cold, and it was decided that
players would prefer to play reasonably close back to back games rather
than be hanging around for a moderate amount of time (not long enough to
recover but long enough for the body to cool down, thus increasing the
chance of injury).
Unfortunately, but not necessarily expectedly, the weather was very windy
and games tended to overrun a lot with some very long caps being played,
this led to games being longer than expected.
So thats what we knew before the tournament. We had to make some decisions
and I stand by all of them made as being for the good of the tournament and
for the good of all the players at the tournament. Maybe with hindsight it
would have been better to make different decisions and have prevented teams
from playing or lowering the amount of pitch time for teams at the
tournament but I think there are good reasons for expecting that this
would have led to a different set of complaints. I'm happy to let people
debate the issues but I can assure you that all decisions were made with
the best interests of UK Ultimate at heart.
As it is, we did our best at the tournament, right down to personally
giving teams that I heard of playing 5 in a row some free bananas to stave
off cramp. A small gesture perhaps, but I hoped it was a nice one!
If you or anyone else has any further feedback regarding the tournament
then please feel free to either email me directly or pass it on to the
DoC. All feedback is taken into account when considering future bids.
I hope this answers some of your questions,
Dave.
At 19:51 12/04/2006, you wrote:
Hi All,
Just heard from players at last weekends tournament that some teams
played 5 games back to back with a limited 30 minute break inbetween!!
which they couldn't take due to the cap overrunning!!
then they only played 2 games on the sunday this makes no sense to me!!
Can someone from the mixed committee or the organisers explain why that
was the case?? as that sort of schedule is not helpful to players of any
level of fitness, and will only injure players etc!! giving them limited
time to get food on board will only add to injuries!!
i quote from the H&S part on the ukua tournament guidelines on the
website below, pay particular attention too the first line!!!
Health and Safety
The health and safety of the competitors, staff and spectators at any
Tournaments is of paramount importance. UK Ultimate sanctioned events
have a required minimum level of medical cover and Health and Safety
standards.....
This situation really needs to be looked at as i thought this type of
crazy scheduling was a thing of the past!!! and we had eradicated it!!
Grayson, Hannah & Jamie over to you!!
Si.b (nearly retired)
p.s. i wasnt there last weekend, but i would have coped with the
physical stress and kept running all day as always!!
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