I would not typically email on britdisc but since I can't decide if Tom actually wanted a response from Warwick I thought I'd go for it anyway. Although I am the captain here my views are not necessarily representative of the rest of my team (although they'd damn well better agree with me if they want to get picked for anything ;)).
Firstly, the final against Sublime was a perfectly well spirited game in my opinion and this was reflected in the score which I gave to them afterwards between 11 and 13 I believe. It wasn't amazing as there were few incredibly close calls to make but on at least one occasion (a callahan) the sublime player made the decision not to call strip when he was unsure for a moment whether it was one. I would consider that to be good spirit. In fact over the entire weekend we did not have a single game which was badly spirited. But anyway, in response to the question about Bears spirit. I think in fairness it had a lot to do with the lack of incredibly close games over the weekend. It is much easier to decline a foul call when you are 8-2 up than when its 8-7. Testosterone doesn't have quite such an effect on my emotions when I feel like we're winning. Is that the way that spirit should work? Well no, probably not. But I doubt I'm the only one who finds that they react much more strongly to calls when they are in a tight game than when they aren't. In addition to that what I find most interesting is that one of the things that we spent time on in training and worked hard on was being more aggressive (both on the force and on D). It almost seems counter intuitive that this would give us higher spirit scores but I think that actually the effect it had was to make us play hard and fair. In order to put this into context, I don't mean that I was teaching people to foul on the force or whatever. We were far more likely to notice and accept our own fouls when we were being aggressive than before. Maybe that had an effect on our spirit score. Summary: - The way that spirit is done at the moment perhaps doesn't give enough extra credit to teams who play fair in a tight game. Dave Tyler Warwick Bears Captain 08/09 p.s. Perhaps the high averages at the tour 0 events were due to a lack of close games for many teams? Certainly the top teams will only have had 2/3 tight games all weekend. > 3. Tour 0 spirit score (Tom Styles) > Message: 3 > Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:46:56 +0100 > From: Tom Styles <[email protected]> > Subject: [BD] Tour 0 spirit score > To: [email protected] > Message-ID: > <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Britdisc, Pugh, > > Can I congratulate Tooting on there public effort to address one of > their poorer spirit scores. I trust that the team in enquiring from a > genuine desire to improve that area of their game and not to defend > themselves. > > The publication of spirit scores after tournaments makes fascinating > reading and gives a much better feel for the tournament than simply > publishing the spirit winners. The BULA scoring system seems to be a > fair tool to gauge spirit and forces teams to do a little thinking > before voting for the team with the funniest call. > > I'm interested that the spread of spirit score at Tour 0 (south) was > from 11.8 - 7.6 and Tour 0 (north) 11.9 - 8.0 > Yet University nationals generated a much bigger spread from 13.4 - 4.3. > > Why is this? Does it spread even further at junior level? > > The University Nationals result has be one of the most fascinating as > both the top spirited team and bottom spirited team competed for the > final. It's a relief that the top spirited team won, what sort of > message would it send if they lost? > > I imagine the Warwick Bears were over the moon to have, not only > dominated the tournament, but done so in a way that was, in the > opinion of the teams they played against, exemplary in terms of > sportsmanship and conduct. I would be great to hear from someone in > the team about whether spirit was something that came naturally or > whether they had to work at it. > > I don't really know what to make of a spirit average of 4.3. I've > never played against Sublime, I don't know why they were consistently > regarded as playing in such a poor manner. I don't know whether they > think such a low spirit score is an issue, or anything to worry about. > Perhaps someone from Portsmouth could shed some light. > > Recently Jamie Cross (UKUA Chair) encouraged all players to "think > carefully about upholding Spirit, even in trying circumstances", it > certainly looks like Tooting are doing just that, not just on the > pitch but in the Ultimate community too. > > Cheers all > Tom > > PS Paganello Photos (including a load from the party) are now up on > http://tom-styles.co.uk > PPS These are my views not necessarily those of my team or Blockstack.tv __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
