Not sure I agree. The split season has definitely demonstrated some benefits, but I feel most of these relate to the development of Mixed Ultimate. Various other posts have documented the relative pros, the most notable to me being the effect it has had on bringing new student players into Tour events.
This is all well & good, not to mention encouraging, but I believe it's been to the detriment of the Open & Women's Tours. The fact remains that Open & Women's is still the primary focus for the vast majority of players in the country, demonstrated by (I'm assuming) the fact that most Mixed players still put the greater emphasis on training with their respective Open & Women's teams, even while the Mixed season is in full swing. I preferred having 4 Tours to this year's 3 (save this for a separate discussion I think!), but I also feel pretty short-changed by the length of the Open season. T1 to Nationals has taken a grand total of 8 weeks this year. What other sport would pride themselves on claiming that their season at the elite level only lasted for 2 months of the year? This also has a number of knock-on effects. If you suffer injury at T1 there's a fair chance you may not play again that season, and the compressed season also makes it very difficult for the balance of the competition to swing. Not that this happens much (certainly not at the top end at any rate), but it would be nice to think that a team could have a disastrous T1, go away and work on it, and turn their season around. Please keep the discussion up, I think it's a conversation that's worth having and a bit more of a public debate than the 'informal feedback' that the minutes of the board allude to (plus the decision to revert to the old structure only won by a vote of 5 to 4!) Cheers, Dan LLL -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of cormac cosgrove Sent: 16 August 2006 15:59 To: [email protected] Subject: [BD] The format of the tour is changing for next year hey guys, the board had voted in favour of removing the Split season format for next year, and reverting to a more integrated format (alternating mixed and open tours). this should all be in the minutes from a recent meeting, i expect they should be available to the public by now? I personally feel that abandoning the split season format is NOT in the best interests of UK ultimate. I also feel that the ultimate public in the UK should have a chance to give feedback to this decision, or feedback on how successful (or unsuccessful) they felt the split season format was this year. In my opinion i feel that the split season has been abandoned very prematurely and that this decision is perhaps based on the short term goals of those making the decisions rather than the long term benifits for the sport in the UK. i believe that both mixed and womens have benifited from the split and any knock the open division teams have taken is both temporary and would have been fully reversed if only the format was given some time to 'bed in'. How do people feel about this? why not ask your team if they preferred the split tour format, and email BD with how your team feel. The decision may still be able to be changed if enough people/teams believe that it should. Cormac __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ranulf.net/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ranulf.net/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp
