I think that the main argument would be that, for example, Chevvy and Leeds would not get very much out of playing other northern teams, then having one game against Fire or Clapham, rather than competitive games all year. This would not fulfil the raison d'etre of the Tour, which was to develop the top teams in UK Ultimate. The current Tour structure generally achieves what it set out to do, and does it very well, I have always thought. In my years of playing tour (pre and post split) I think it also did pretty well at giving the other echelons of teams good competition as well.
Now....whether the purpose of the tour should be focussed mainly on developing the top teams in the UK.....well that is another question. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Armitage Sent: 14 May 2007 12:01 To: [email protected] Subject: [BD] Sensible argument for scrapping the Tour Is the tour creaking at its joints? Yep, it is time to give it up. We can afford to move to warm up tournaments, go along to European tournaments, and have our own sectionals, regionals, nationals/EUCF regionals and the European finals. Why not? Give me a good reason why not? Here is why it works: I spent time playing ultimate in Texas, where distances to travel are huge but I still went to many tournaments local and far away, and I went to Sectionals and lost every game. But the ultimate was more fun and there was no pressure to 'have' to go to tournaments. Sectionals are competitive events for the smaller teams and a necessary step for the big Texas teams like Doublewide. Then regionals is a tough tourney for say Doublewide as there are only a very few qualifying spots. And nationals is well just tough. From my experience in America playing with a bunch of students out of College Station, playing at the bottom end of a sectionals, regionals, etc structure is fine because of the quantity of other tournaments that fill the other weekends. So in the UK we could have a sectionals, which may be an necessary step for a big team like Leeds, but not so competitive. Student teams could go as a warm up for the student season, fun teams could go to play for fun (cos thats what it is all about). Then regionals would be the next step, probably the end of a tough season for my club in Southampton (there could be only 4 regions, or just 2). Then a nationals to select the top teams to go towards EUCF, or nationals would be the new EUCF west region and our regionals would feed into the EUCF region, whatever, is it so hard to imagine. There are plenty of open tournaments through the year, and mixed ones too. I could go to Paganello, Dive Hard, Windmill Windup, Brugges, Copa Cobana, Brighton Beyond and I think I would be quite happy (might have miss spelt one of those, but you get my point). If I then also went to a mixed and open sectionals plus qualified through to regionals that would be 10 tournaments, or almost one a month. Is that not a good ultimate calendar or have you all got nothing else to do with your weekends? It is time to move on. Scot -- ********************************************************** John Armitage PhD Student Geology and Geophysics, NOC http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/gg/people/armitage/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed ____________________________________________________________ Electronic mail messages entering and leaving Arup business systems are scanned for acceptability of content and viruses __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
