Everyone, I am writing this from my personal account on mine and Adam's behalf as we feel we have portrayed the wrong impression and would like to clarify some of the points raised.
First off, thank you to everyone who has expressed an opinion. Part of why we introduced the idea from the team rather than ourselves was to get a realistic impression about it rather than there being any bias from people who did and didn't know us. We feel that we need to clarify that we have not formed any 'organisation', and we are not attempting to introduce a new, competing form of Ultimate. The formal approach we adopted was to attempt to give a more official impression about the tournament being well-run, due to trying to appeal to top players who may otherwise have dismissed the idea as another 'fun' tournament that wasn't worth going to. It is understandable however that this came across slightly differently than intended and may have given the impression that we were trying to give an official image to this new sport. That is not the case. Part of the initial difficulty we had was naming the tournament. The name we ended up with was purely based on the name used in America, as we would be using pretty much the exact same rules, and thought it would be appropriate to use the same name. We did not want to offer a name for the sport, but merely for the tournament. Again, we understand that our intentions were not made as clear as they possibly should have been. The use of the word 'experimental' referred to whether the tournament would be successful in terms of how much the participants enjoyed it and therefore whether it would be worth doing again. It did not refer to the experimentation of rules we would like to see implemented into Ultimate- we are opposed to the introduction of referees to Ultimate and feel it should very much be kept as it is- that is why we both play it and love it so much. What we are attempting here is (I have attempted to avoid the use of this word thus far as I felt it may compromise the competitiveness of play) a 'novelty' event, which we felt many people may enjoy experiencing, based on how much Adam and I felt we would enjoy it ourselves. Our motivation is purely out of how enjoyable we feel it would be to try something different, due to the small number of teams there is no financial incentive whatsoever. Plus we feel it could be a chance to have some bragging rights over other University regions, but in a slightly more interesting format (not that Ultimate isn't interesting enough already!!). We would have no intention of taking this any further than *possibly* having it become an annual tournament, if the first attempt was enjoyable. We envisioned it being something that players could look forward to attending (with a bit of selection excitement and prestige involved about getting to represent your region) and playing with and against other top players whilst giving University players valuable experience, in a light-hearted (yet hopefully relatively competitive) and interesting environment due to the use of different rules. In the same way iron-man tournaments don't attempt to change squad sizes in Ultimate, the use of referees here is not intended to cross into Ultimate (of course, this is a slightly more extreme rule as it requires a different rule set to be written out, just so it works without confusion!). We are considering re-branding the tournament to avoid some of the name-related issues that have been raised. Possibly naming the tournament and not the game that will be played will help. We are not strict in the way we feel this has to be done, but felt that offering the opportunity for players to try something out of interest would be a positive thing, and that surely there are other people who would also (like Adam and I), fancy trying it. Information was posted on here explaining the idea to everyone firstly to gauge interest (of which there seems to be plenty), and secondly we thought it would be a fairer way of reaching the whole ultimate community rather than emailing only the top teams and being too exclusive. It also means everyone is aware of the tournament- giving those who represent their region something to be proud of. Aplogies for any misunderstanding we have caused over our ideas and/or intentions, (and for the excessive use of brackets!), Jacko (on behalf of myself and Adam, and everyone else involved) __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
