Sorry to labour the point (after all that email traffic after tour 1)
but I'd like to complain about the lack of crossovers at tour 3. I
foolishly didn't check the schedule when it was sent out, since the
crossover issue had been addressed at tour 2. I didn't foresee the
crossovers disappearing again, so sorry I didn't make this complaint
before the tournament...
Anyway, it remains my belief that crossovers (at least) are necessary
on the B-tour. Teams are hugely variable from tour to tour in a way
which is not seen on the A tour. If the best three players turn up, a
team can easily rise 15 places from one tour to the next. The format
has to allow for this.
Specifically, this weekend: We (abstract, 3rd seeds) were in a pool
with Bristol 2 (13th seeds) and Brixton (20th). Bristol took 8
players to tour 2, and 16 players to this one. Bit of a difference
there. Brixton weren't at tour 2, so they were underseeded too.
If Brixton had won their sudden-death game against bristol, we'd have
been in the bottom 8. In fact, we ended up in the middle 8. We lost
one game all weekend, and came 9th. We played our OWN SECOND TEAM in
the plate final (for which we AGAIN didn't receive a plate,
goddammit... why aren't they being awarded this season?)
Bristol only missed a place in the final on a three-way tie, and yet
Brixton, who lost to them 15-14, couldn't finish higher than 17th. Is
there anybody out there who could seriously suggest that they 'suck it up'?
CROSSOVERS ARE AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY!!!!
In fact, as I've said before, my (infinitely) preferred option would
be to have more (shorter) games on the saturday. An open 24 team
format cannot be decided fairly with six games each.
We'd still get to play proper 90 min games on the sunday for qf sf f
in each group of eight, and there'd be some chance that the right
teams would actually be in each of these brackets.
As I remember it, the arguments against shorter games on the B-tour
mostly revolved around the difference in TOTAL pitch time between the
A and B tours - not many people were hugely upset about the specific
fact that we didn't play 90 min games. There are such big
differences in skill and experience between the top and bottom of the
B-tour that a large proportion of saturday games don't need anything
like 90 mins to decide.
And in case anyone wishes to point out that by this stage of the
season the seedings should be fairly accurate, look at it this way -
if the seedings are accurate, the pools are a waste of time, since
positions won't change. And on those occasions when positions do
change in a pool, it's absolutely inevitable that one team will get
f****d over. In no respect whatsoever is a tiny-pool (3 teams),
non-crossover format a justifiable choice.
Benji
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