From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk  Sun Oct 27 11:28:14 1996
Received: from thistle.csv.warwick.ac.uk by clover.csv.warwick.ac.uk with ESMTP
	id LAA10958; Sun, 27 Oct 1996 11:27:03 GMT
Received: by thistle.csv.warwick.ac.uk
	id XAA08611; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 23:20:33 +0100 (BST)
Received: from violet.csv.warwick.ac.uk by thistle.csv.warwick.ac.uk with ESMTP
	id XAA08587; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 23:20:05 +0100 (BST)
Received: from arl-img-3.compuserve.com by violet.csv.warwick.ac.uk with SMTP
	id XAA07079; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 23:19:54 +0100 (BST)
Received: by arl-img-3.compuserve.com (8.6.10/5.950515)
	id SAA07788; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 18:19:20 -0400
Date: 22 Oct 96 18:18:01 EDT
From: Stuart Clark <101336.3664@compuserve.com>
To: Britdisc <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: 3 Re's in 1
Message-ID: <961022221800_101336.3664_GHW73-6@CompuServe.COM>
Sender: owner-britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk
Precedence: bulk
Status: RO

Firstly, Si Hill,

One word of advice, ignore all your mail messages all day, then read all of them
together last thing before you leave - then you can compose one big reply!!!
Like this.....

David Mackay wrote:

>incidentally, can a different tournament format be found which reliably
identifies and ranks 
>the top 5 teams in a region, independent of seeding?

and Si Hill replied:

>nobody (except possibly First Touch) could have known that
>this might happen given their results over the summer.  If they had got
>hold of Chris or myself beforehand and let us know that they had some 
>different players then they may have been seeded higher... but TDs aren't 
>psychic...

I think the last point is the most valid.  TD's cannot take the full brunt of
the blame for seedings which go slightly awry, they can only go on past
experience of how teams have performed over the year and produce a seedings list
which they hope fairly accurately reflects this performance.  Another thing to
be said for Nationals (and Regionals) is that countless numbers of good, bad and
indifferent players come out of the woodwork to play in these tournaments which
means that squads that go to Nationals can be boosted and sometimes very
different from those that compete during the rest of the summer.  I spoke to
Chris Hughes before the tournament about formats - Did we want peer pools?
Didn't we? At the end of the day I said to him that I wanted a format that gave
EVERY team a shot at qualifying and at the end of the day, isn't it the five
strongest teams that are going through from the South-East?  If you look at the
placings, despite being mixed around, seven of the top eight seeds finished in
the top eight, the only surprise being First Touch,

Final placings were [with initial seedings in brackets]:
1 Shotgun Wedding [1]
2 UTI [2]
3 Violently Happy [3]
4 First Touch [14]
5 Strange Blue  [8]
6 Exotica Playthings [7]
7 Lurkers [4]
8 Village People [5]

Lurkers and Village were both fielding depleted squads for whatever reasons and
the other top seeded team (Mohawks at 6) who finished at 13 were missing two of
their veterans. If you take all these things into account, the seedings (at
least for the top eight) were pretty accurate.

The ranking/summer league system Si is talking about goes a long way to address
these "problems", which, if I understand it correctly, identifies 5 or 6 key
summer tournaments (the BIG ones!!) where final placings will be important.  It
is then up to the teams entering these 5 or 6 to field the closest semblance to
a Nationals squad that they can muster for those tournaments.  Again, this
system is only reliable if this is what happens, otherwise you have the
situation you have now. (Before we get into a big row about this, can we at
least wait until Ultimatum comes out so we're all fully informed and starting on
the same footing)

Toby Green wrote with regard to Nationals Formats:

>My point is rather more fundamental. I think that the BUF should lay down
>minimum standards for all matches in Nationals, starting from pitch size,
>availablility of water etc, through to game length, time-outs, half-times etc.
A
>properly thought-through set of arrangements would then help TD's run the
>tournament more evenly across the country. Something as fundamental as
half-time
>to negate the toss should not be a matter of debate in one part of the
>tournament - it should be a standard.

Toby, after last years national finals I wrote to Sam (BUF Director), Scott (BUF
Secretary) and Jon Hope (National Finals TD) to suggest that there be some kind
of standardisation of both format and rules for both regionals and Nationals.  I
suggested that the BUF director, secretary, Regional Co-ordinators and/or
Tournament Directors (if different from RC's) should meet well in advance of the
National tournaments to agree on the format/guidelines/rules/general running of
each tournament and that the decisions made should be communicated to all
competing teams well in advance of Nationals so that if anyone had any problems
with those decisions they could raise them and get them sorted out beforehand.
Whilst such blinding enlightenment might be impractical to implement, one of the
things that came out of that letter was the formation of a Tournament Rules
Group (TRG) at every National Tournament, which is to comprise the TD, a BUF
officer and a player. These people are there to deal with any problems teams
encounter or any unfairness teams feel they have been dealt, and as Kevin has
already confirmed in his reply, such a group was in operation at the SW
regionals.

Finally (Phew! Everyone relaxes).  Lawrence wrote:

>One point raised during play on Sunday- how's about a Finals 
>tournament for those teams who didn't qualify for the Hitchin final.  
>It's getting to the stage where we're playing the same old teams all 
>the time.

Yeah, brilliant idea and I'm sure that those teams that don't qualify would love
to play again in a "Not the Nationals" rather like the skunks held indoors a
couple of years ago.  Unfortunately it's fraught with problems.  The biggest,
and most damaging of these is one that RC's and the BUF exec encounter all too
frequently - apathy.  Getting bids for Regionals and Finals is challenging
enough without the added bonus of trying to find people to put on the
"non-qualifiers" tournament.  Secondly, who's going to host it?  Any team going
to regionals with half a hope of qualifying is not going to be spending their
spare time organising a tournament that they're not intending to go to -
therefore only teams who know they aren't going to qualify would be potential
hosts for such a tournament and if that's the case, what's the point in them
going to Regionals in the first place, AND if that's true, why don't they host a
tournament ANY time of the year - not just as a consolation tournament for those
who didn't qualify - Now you're going round in circles and you're back with
apathy.
Finally, supposing none of the above is true and I'm talking rubbish (unlikely -
but it could happen ;-)).  If Finals are within a week or two of regionals then
any team hosting this consolation tournament would most likely have to be a
University/School team with quick access to highly available grounds or halls.
No Open/Womens team is going to be able to book a ground and organise a
tournament in a fortnight - or if they do, they're miracle workers!!!

These are just thoughts and they are totally open to criticism and comment -
more of which can only improve things in the future.

Cheers
Stu.

SE RC
VILLAGE PEOPLE

P.S. Kev, 

>Thank God this isn't taking place on Eurodisc, otherwise we'd have been flamed
to hell by >now.

True, but hasn't Eurodisc been quiet since we all jumped ship?  Oooh, Harsh -
but Fair!!!  Heh Heh.
I'm not even going to get into the argument about when to hold Nationals.