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From: "Alan Baldwin P (EML)" <Alan.Baldwin@eml.ericsson.se>
To: britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Advance Notice
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 11:35:33 +0200
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Just thought I'd like to stick my oar in,

Wayne has come up with a pretty definitive description of history, and a
pretty good description of what would happen if we tightened up the geo
rules. I've got a few points to add. 

He missed a particularly relevant point in view of who he plays for.
Back in the early nineties Druids did pick off the cream of players from
Uni. That ONE university being Southampton! The 91/92 Southampton team
were Karl Mann, Jeff Jackson, Wayne Retter, Chris Hughes, myself, Paul
Schuricht, Dave Murray, and a few others. Anyone notice anything in
common about these players? - Druids possibly? The problem we had is
that everyone in this team was due to graduate at different times.
Forming a team out of these players when the first batch graduated would
have destroyed the skunks, so the solution for us was to play with
Druids, with whom we already had close ties, since Jeff played for them
pre-Uni..

When the Warwick team of a year later Guy, Colin, Norm etc...  graduated
they had no such  strong links to any one club, the result was that they
all went their separate ways, some to Stan, some to Druids. Most of
those players are now the core of UTI, most of their big tournament
experience has come from playing with teams such as Stan, VH, Druids,
and Gun. 

For the UTI team to turn around and start criticising these teams for
not being geo, for them to start getting on their toy (high) horses and
saying they've developed their own team, their own tactics, it was all
their own doing, its not just wrong, its downright hypocritical. If
winning affects your memory so badly then I'm happy we never did it too
much as Druids. Lets face it every single one of the UTI players (or
players on any top team) would jump ship to another team if their own
team was for some reason not going to world clubs. Can't remember Gun
being so undignified, petulant, smug, and childish when they were
winning tournament after tournament.

On the subject of geo-teams, what does it matter? - We have the
strongest set of teams this country has ever seen, the middle level of
British Ultimate is beginning to show real signs of strength, and for
that we have the tour to thank. The tour encourages competition at this
level particularly, and the 5-12 section in the tournament is always
hotly contested. (though not always by Red-shift :-( )

Is the geo-team concept really the reason for this new strength, or is
it the fact that the tour forces teams of a similar level together? I
moved form one of the telephone teams to a geo team at the tail end of
last year. (Druids-Red-shift). The reasons for this move was that we
already had a reasonable player base in Southampton who all "commute" to
play. We all wanted to practice regularly, besides picking up with
Skunks practices at the weekend. It just seemed the right thing to do
last year, having now sat on both sides of the fence. I can honestly say
that I prefer playing for the telephone team, but enjoy the regular
practices organised for the geo-team. As Rafi says we just love playing
this great sport.

Next year we won't be playing with Red-shift, because there will no
longer be a Red-shift team. several of us are returning to Druids, yes
I'm jumping ship, I want to play at world clubs, but that's not the only
reason. It also has to do with player numbers, caused by a few players
leaving, a few injuries, and a couple of emigrations! However you can
bet your bottom dollar that I'll still organise practices in Southampton
outside of the skunks practices, and we'll still train some of the
upcoming stars from the skunks team in our practices.

Alan Baldwin