In reply to Gary (and Smatt, who pointed it out in a PM) with regards to
what I posted earlier - the unfair 'downgrading' or 'upgrading' of
scores from teams who have been unlucky and played all bad spirited
teams, or lucky with exceptionally good spirited teams, could possibly
be addressed by normalising scores with regards to specific teams'
average scores, I'll have a proper think about it later. I'm convinced
if all factors are considered, a formula for normalising scores across
teams across the different categories is the way to go.
The following message is on behalf of Scott Martin (who has trouble
signing up to britdisc on his email, so direct any replies to
magnitude10 at hotmail.co.uk).
Sent by Scott Anthony Martin:
I'm taking the chance to weigh in here as captain of a team often
referred to as 'badly spirited' - Predominantly due to 'bad' language
and physicality.
Firstly, 'acceptable physicality' varies team to team. As a general
rule, I have found that teams/players lower down the tour rankings or
those with little/no experience of higher level play detest contact of
any type, whilst those at the opposite end of the spectrum expect, or
even relish it. Ultimate is a 'non-contact' sport in so much as football
or basketball are. Some contact is deemed necessary to allow the game to
be played in a logical manner. By this I mean that if two people are
running side by side for a disc, arms moving, there will inherently be
some shoulder or arm contact, and provided neither player attempts to
impede the other, this is totally acceptable.
Furthermore, if a player cuts towards a defender and the defender
chooses to hold his ground and thus contact occurs (offensive foul on
the defensive player), then in my eyes, this is totally acceptable, and
indeed just good defence. However, I have come across many teams -
particularly lower ranked teams - who will call a foul on you as a
defender and act as though you've punched them in the face and called
their grandmother names, whilst throwing allllll the toys out of the
pram. This discrepancy is tough to resolve, but I feel that by being
made aware, perhaps teams and players who had not realised that this
occurs could be more understanding when it does.
'Bad' language is something that has always bothered me. Perhaps being
from a working class, northern background, I don't see curse words as
offensive, provided they're not directed at me. And rarely do I see or
hear that happen on a frisbee pitch. Yet I've had many complaints made
towards myself or my teammates who have, for example, been broken for a
score and in frustration shouted "Oh for f*cks sake". Why is that an
issue? Name one sport in the world where passion is not allowed to flow,
and where athletes do not use some choice words to do so. I think people
need to lighten up in this regard, and only penalise teams who use
language as a weapon, rather than as an excuse to vent at themselves.
I'm not against an 'out of twenty' system, but I absolutely HATE the
final question of 'your spirit compared to theirs' and have never even
heard mention of a team who has marked their own team down in favour of
giving points to the other without somewhat ignoring the question to do
so. As a result, 18 is surely the "best" mark you can obtain, without
penalising yourself? Therefore I start at 18 and for negative influences
I deduct marks, and if they display things that I consider excellent
spirit (eg calling you 'in' during a sudden death point knowing it
likely costs them the game, and so on), then I'll somewhat ignore the
deduction to my own team and award bonus points. Scoring 18, 19 or 20 is
not terribly unusual from my teams. As has been raised, this can be
favourable to teams who face my teams, and be a negative impact on my
own team, if every team we face gives a base value of 10 and works
around that. Frankly, if we hold spirit in such high regard, I feel that
benefit of the doubt should give all teams maximum marks until they
prove that they do not deserve such status, and do things to lose
points. As a result, I like to work top-down, not from the middle. I
would propose the following amendment to the spirit system, to produce a
scoresheet that looks somewhat like so: http://i55.tinypic.com/24pw020.jpg
Scott
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