I have two points I want to raise:
1) The schedule was not good enough.
2) Why not have a Tour Qualifier? (See next email, for people who
don't care about scheduling nonsense).
1) Schedule
Two major problems - a) the format was completely unsuitable for
deciding the best three teams from a (necessarily) badly seeded
event, and b) the pitches were severely underused.
a) We were in a pool of 3. We lost a game to the 3rd (I think) seeds,
and immediately we couldn't finish above ninth. We did finish ninth,
although I don't wish to claim that we could otherwise have got
promoted. That's not relevant - what matters is that it is OBVIOUSLY
possible for the best 2 (or even 3 !! ) teams to be in the same
group, and only one could come close to promotion. This is clearly
wrong. There is no way that the first B tour of the year can be
decided by giving each team only five matches. Long matches between
equally-good teams are great, but they are not more important than a
fair tournament.
Solutions:
Obviously, more games. If that means shorter games, so be it. My
personal suggestion would be to have loads of 45 or 60 minute games
on the saturday, and then three proper length QF SF F games for each
group of 8 on the sunday. The short saturday games are necessary so
that more teams play each other and the placings are more fairly
decided; and anyway, a lot of such games will be severe mismatches
that won't need 105 minutes to decide. Those few games which are
close and are tight for time are a small price to pay for having a
tournament structure that's anywhere close to fair.
b) There were 12 pitches this weekend, and 24 teams. That's plenty.
Pitches were in use from 9am until close to 7pm on saturday - 10
hours. In that time (I still find this hard to believe) THREE games
were played on each pitch. People have complained earlier today about
not getting great facilities for their fees - pitches cost massive
amounts, and if they're underused in this way it's no wonder it
doesn't look like value for money. Would you believe that 2 pitches
had ZERO games on the saturday? I'm still struggling with that one.
Surely it's blatantly obvious that if we have a tournament that
requires more games to generate a fair result, AND we have a shedload
of spare pitch time, there's a plausible solution not far away...it's
frankly a disgrace that crossovers, as a bare minimum, were not added
to the schedule.
The idea of trying to guarantee that no team ever plays back to back
games in the way used this w/e (leaving a 2-hour gap between games on
each pitch) is in my opinion wrong. The cost of this is too high - no
games to watch when you're not playing, but far more importantly the
waste of pitch time. Back to back games are a necessary evil of
weekend tournaments. They should be minimised, and there should never
be 3 games back to back, but it's daft, at B-tour level, for everyone
to be sitting around for a couple of hours with nothing happening. In
pool play, there is NEVER any need for back to back games - half the
pools play a game, then the other half. On the same pitches. If a gap
is to be included in a tournament schedule, it should be placed after
pool play and before crossovers, and/or after crossovers and before
QFs, which are the only times that back to back games are sometimes
inevitable*. It absolutely need NOT be shoved in between pool games.
Where's the constructive criticism in (b), you ask? Well, there's not
a lot that can be said - it's been done now and nothing can change
it. The only constructive suggestion is that this situation can be
avoided easily by asking for help. It isn't easy dealing with three
schedules at once, I'm sure, but people can help. As indoor DOC, I'd
have been more than happy to help sort out some outdoor schedules,
and I know at least a little about it. Both Rich Hims and Jon Palmer
have had extensive theoretical and practical experience of scheduling.
So, two main points:
- Don't put huge gaps in the tournament schedule
- 90 min games are not more important than giving everyone a fair
chance in the tournament
------------------------------------------
And a few very minor points that vexed me also this weekend.
- We came ninth, but for some utterly inexplicable reason the plate
went to 17th. I always thought that everyone who won all three sunday
games got a wee trophy (cup, plate, bowl, etc... for 1, 9, 17, 25
etc). No fair. (boohoo)
- The most important game (1st v 2nd in the pool) was first up for
us. Normally, that would be the last pool game, so that everyone can
get into the tournament playing the bigger (expected) mismatches.
- Fire 2: I understand the thinking behind 'punishing' Fire for not
entering later tours last year. But not only did they get punished,
so did all the teams in their pool who were demolished by a blatantly
A-tour team. Surely a better solution to this can be found - in fact,
see my next email...
* In a tournament with reasonable numbers of teams, that is. If
there's something daft like 27 teams then sometimes that will lead to
back-to-back games. Otherwise, it'll be (after crossovers) top 8 QF;
bottom 8 QF; then top 8 SF etc. No problems.
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