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From: "Simon Statham" <Simon_Statham@birmingham.gov.uk>
To: britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk
Message-ID: <80256B95.004C1143.00@birmingham.gov.uk>
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 14:54:43 +0100
Subject: The Tour/Relegation
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Carrying on from a debate that was raging a few weeks ago about the future of
the Tour etc., with the possibilities of having an upper and lower tier etc.  At
the time I didn't really have an opinion, I thought it was all going ok.

But now I read that there are 48 teams entered in Tour 1 and that it is likely
that there will have to be relegation of some of the bottom teams because Tour 2
and Tour 3 can't accommodate this number of teams, or that more than 48 teams
wanted to enter so the others are given a chance in the other Tours.  I have to
ask what happens to the teams who are relegated from Tour 1?  When and where do
they get to play their Ulitimate over the summer?

I am sure that I am not alone in noticing the decline in the number of 'fun' or
non-official tournaments being hosted over the summer, what with the Tour and
the Mixed Tour running every 2nd weekend.  People don't seem to want to play 3
weekends in a row, so the weekeds between official tournaments are not used for
non-official events.  So, if a team gets relegated from Tour 1 and they don't
have enough girls to play in the Mixed Tour (and we know there are a distinct
lack of girls, seeing as everyone fights to pick-up more girls the days before
the tournaments!), they won't get to play again until Tour 4 in late July!  This
just seems crazy to me.

If the Tour is so popular, why can't 2 tournaments be held on the same weekends
over the summer, having a top tier (top 32 or so teams?) and a bottom tier (the
rest).  There could be promotion/relegation between the tournaments, but at
least if you get relegated you just go to the other tournament the next month,
and are not just excluded.  This will provide more tournaments for teams to go
to in the year, encourage newer teams and players to come to the Tour, provide
some genuine incentive for lower teams to do well and improve as well as giving
all teams a truer picture of where they stand in the national rankings
(especially if they're not in the top 16).

I obviously raise this from a partly selfish point of view as Slipdisc are one
of those teams who don't have enough girls to play in the Mixed Tour, so we rely
on the open Tour events as pretty much the only tournaments we can get to April
to July.  This year we will have a 1st and 2nd team, the 1st team will be ok but
the 2nd team could well be fighting down in these relegation places.  If they do
get relegated we'll have around 30 players and only able to enter 1 team, so
half our sqaud will have to stay at home.

Something needs to be done if there are that many teams out there wanting to
play in competitive events.  I don't believe it is too late to do this this
summer, if the venues can be found, after Tour 1 cut off at the top 24 or 32
teams and run another tournament for the lower teams.  Or would this mean less
profit for TDs?  The "I'm alright, Jack" attitude of the top teams has got to
change for the benefit of the rest of us or nothing will have changed at all in
the way that the game is run in this Country.

Si
(Slipdisc)




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