The other side of the argument:
The nature of the tour means that teams have more than one chance to
play well. Most people don't want to train hard, 4-5 times a week in
some cases, just to play one competitive tournament. And it would be one
for most people - the top teams would breeze everything except
nationals; the lower teams also would most likely find that one of the
levels (regionals, sectionals, or nationals) actually suited their ability.
The tour promotes training together, and the need to keep a consistent
squad throughout the season. One-off tournaments promote telephone
teams, at least until Ultimate is big enough to have competitive
regional leagues which may encourage teams to stay together all season.
The tour also gives more people the opportunity to gain competitive
experience. If somebody's thoughtless friend organises a wedding on the
day of nationals, then you'd have to miss it - tours give you the chance
to miss one and still get competitive ultimate. If the tour disappeared,
other tournaments would become more super-competitive as teams needed
the chance to practice hard; I for one wouldn't like to go sober
throughout the Copa or Brugges.
And most fundamentally, the tour has worked, and still works, in the
important respect for which it was designed - to improve UK Ultimate.
The top teams get tough games against each other on a regular basis.
Most A-tour teams get perhaps 4 or 5 tough-but-theoretically-winnable
games out of 6, rather than the 1 or 2 they might get from a knockout
format. The fact that there are tours close to each other is what
enables the accurate seeding, which in turn is what enables things like
peer-pools, or tournaments where no-one outside the top-8 can win, and
things like that. It certainly seems that UK club ultimate has improved
since the inception of the tour, not just because of the growing sport,
but at a faster rate and with greater depth than in any other european
country.
It may seem arbitrary (and it essentially is) but the UKUA badge on a
tour tournament serves to make that tournament count for something. How
often at tour have you played against a team who are drinking on the
sidelines? It's never happened to me. And no matter how competitive a
non-tour tournament is, there will always be toga-wearing teams to play
against. (And quite rightly too, in my opinion - but what the tour does
well is separate the fun tourneys from the serious ones).
And here's my suggestion for what should replace the tour: not
regionals, but regional leagues - regional tours, if you like. The big
improvement to the tour would be in reducing the distances travelled.
And there would still be an ongoing, consistent competition which
enabled close games and formed lasting teams.
But are we ready for that? No. Ultimate in most regions is not strong
enough to support a local tour. Most places would have one super-team
who could win just by turning up, which would hardly be great
preparation for them. Effectively, due to the fact that it remains a
student game and London is a graduate destination, London remains too
strong a region and would massively distort efforts to regionalise the
tour. The best that could be done would be to split the tour in 2 -
north and south - and I think that would be the first step, possibly in
the next couple of years if people really get behind the idea. But
further regionalisation is a long, long way away.
The regionals, sectionals, nationals set-up works in North America
partly because there is a stronger local base in most cities, enabling
competitive play on a regular basis. Someone told me they played in the
FOURTH DIVISION of the Toronto league. Even in Brisbane, I played in a
local league. Until Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol and all the other cities
can find enough players to run something like that, we'll have no choice
but to run regular national tournaments.
We're lucky in this country that the travelling distances for national
tournaments are about the same as many /state/ tournaments in the US -
we should continue to use our relatively compact geography to our
advantage and compete regularly at a national level.
Basically - tweak the tour if you like (things can always be improved)
but don't scrap it.
Benji
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