From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk Tue May 23 11:20:48 2000 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.10.1/8.9.3) id e4NAJbJ17432 for britdisc-outgoing; Tue, 23 May 2000 11:19:37 +0100 (BST) Received: from snowdrop.csv.warwick.ac.uk (root@snowdrop [137.205.192.31]) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.10.1/8.9.3) with ESMTP id e4NAJZp17412 for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Tue, 23 May 2000 11:19:35 +0100 (BST) Received: from hotmail.com (f53.law7.hotmail.com [216.33.237.53]) by snowdrop.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.10.1/8.9.3) with SMTP id e4NAJYU11077 for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Tue, 23 May 2000 11:19:34 +0100 (BST) Received: (qmail 62936 invoked by uid 0); 23 May 2000 08:32:45 -0000 Message-ID: <20000523083245.62935.qmail@hotmail.com> Received: from 129.11.119.146 by www.hotmail.com with HTTP; Tue, 23 May 2000 01:32:45 PDT X-Originating-IP: [129.11.119.146] From: "Matthew Hims" <mmhims@hotmail.com> To: britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk Subject: A word or two from Catch Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 01:32:45 PDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Sender: owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Hi All, For anyone who might be interested here is Catch's perspective on weekend. Some of our comments have already been made by others, but to make a complete story we've left them in................... A couple of pre-comments: 1. Thanks as always to the people (Nancy + Ian Stebbing, Chris Hughes, U8 Committee, etc) who make the effort to run ultimate tournaments; 2. Hope that nobody was injured seriously this weekend. We are certainly not interested in assigning any "blame" around the place. The reason for writing now is to try to move things in the right direction, given that there have clearly been problems this year. 1. Why did Catch not play? Catch 22 had a team of 11 players at Tour 2. 10 of them will be playing at Worlds this summer. We take the tour very seriously, but feel that it is less important than representing GB (or NZ!) at Worlds. When we saw the fields this weekend we decided that a) the risk of injury was extremely high if we played at anything like 100% b) playing at below 100% is worse than not playing (and often does nothing to reduce likelihood of injury anyway) c) getting injured at this point in the season would be a disaster in the context of WUC. 2. What did we do to salvage our games? After discussing the situation with the other teams in our groups we believed that if we found a field close by they would come to play us. At around 10:30 we found a very good football field next to The Folly pub just outside the racecourse and established that we could use it (for free) all day - although probably not on Sunday. We went there immediately to practice, and told the other teams about the field. However it became clear by 12:30 that the other teams had decided to take the walkover since we weren't going to be at the alloted "pitch". 3. What did we do? Given that our solution was clearly not acceptable to our opponents we realised that we needed to discuss the situation with the ultim8 committee (u8c). If we played no games then we would finish 12th, and then have to start Tour 3 from 12th position. This would be a nonsense. It was agreed that a) Catch would be "withdrawn" (I forget the nice phrase we used) from the tournament - thereby scoring zero points b) there would be no penalty imposed on Catch c) Catch would be seeded 2 or 3 in the next Tour event depending on the final finishing position obtained by Dough Boy d) Catch would ideally be refunded in full for their entry depending on the finances of the tournament and the BUF. 4. Did we do the right thing? Who knows? We think so. I hope that nobody was injured - although this wasn't the impression we got from the First Aid team at the tournament on Saturday afternoon. I spoke to a number of people on Saturday - admittedly not a good cross-section of players - and certainly no more than 20 in detail. Without exception they all agreed that a) the fields were unacceptable and likely to cause injury b) it was impossible to play properly c) they understood our position well. A smaller number of them also stated that a) they thought we were right not to play b) they had not wanted to play but had felt pressurised to do so by teammates and/or opponents. One other person that we spoke to was refusing to play although his teammates continued. See you on the beautiful fields of Southampton!!!!! Catch22 ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com