Brummie,
Here's an explanation of some of the points you raise. Things could have
been done better in places, and we'll try and learn from the things that
didn't go so well, but hopefully I'll be able to answer some of your
queries.
This will be a long one.
1 - If the format for Tour 1 is so open, what was the point in Tour 0?
Tour 0 as a seeding tournament might work in principle, but if you
divvy into North/South then you create a new problem that needs fixing
at Tour 1. Tour 0 should never have happened - what a waste of
effort.
Tour 0 was not deliberately split. It was split because of the paucity
of bids (i.e. zero) that were able to host it in one place. This appears
to have been because it fell in the football season and many venues were
unavailable. We'll take this on board. But once it was split, we had
little choice but to open the format a little at T1. That there were a
number of significant moves up and down shows that this was worth doing
- it may also seem to you to show that T0 was pointless, but that is
something we could not have predicted when the original plan, to host a
single combined T0, was made. Should we have cancelled Tour 0
completely? Or would most people be happier with the way that we tried
to adjust to the circumstances when we had no bids?
2 - Its commonly said that the "big teams" shouldn't have to play at
Tour 0 because its "a waste of their time". For the second year in a
row, one of the teams that didn't need to go to Tour 0 dropped a
significant number of places (for whatever reason). My point is that
perhaps it should be considered that those "big clubs" aren't as
stable as people assume, and that other teams are closing the gap.
Throw in things like Fire having evenly split squads and things become
less predictable still. Basically, if we're going to have a seeding
tournament then every team needs to be there.
There were originally two reasons for the top teams being exempt. One is
that many top players (i.e. those playing big post-season GB and
international tournaments) complained of tiredness over a long season.
The other, and to me more important, reason was that running a
completely open format for a large number of teams is a big problem, and
any excuse to run it with fewer is worth grabbing. Top teams have been
exempt from T0 for the past couple of years for precisely this reason.
This reason is meaningless when we have a split T0 and therefore plenty
of room - but again, the split happened quite late on. The top 4 were
expecting an exemption, and could very well have planned their
pre-season accordingly, so we decided not to force them to go to T0.
They were offered the chance, and had we known earlier about the Fire
situation (we did find out before T0, but very late) then we would have
forced them to send both their teams to T0.
3 - Who wrote that schedule, and who approved that venue? Why were
some teams playing first and last game on Saturday? With a 9am start
and a 7.30pm finish, add in warmup / warmdown time and we were on the
fields for 12 hours. That's a ridiculously long time. Luckily it
didn't rain too much and it wasn't freezing cold; but it could have
been. There was ZERO shelter and the only facilities I saw were
portaloos. There was inadequate parking which resulted in a lot of
people getting parking fines. The pitches weren't even close to flat,
the first one we played on had craters, not potholes.
There are a lot of points in here. Firstly, the schedule - personally I
believe that Felix and his colleagues did an unbelievable job. The
original bid was for "25-30 pitches". The UKU, and the bids committee in
particular, are not in a position to go round and measure all the
venues, so we have no choice but to accept the info on the bid document.
As late as thursday, we were still expecting over 20 pitches. I'm not
sure what happened, whether one part of the venue was unsuitable or
what, but there is very little we can do in this situation. To squeeze
the whole thing onto 18 pitches was a monumental effort, and an early
start/late finish was unavoidable. [Either that or some teams play 3 or
4 in a row.] It is far from ideal, but again we were left with few
choices. We could have reduced the number of games for everyone and
changed the format, but with the already discussed vagaries created by
the split T0 this would have been strongly to the detriment of the
fairness of the tournament - certainly more detrimental than any
unevenness about which team had had more sleep.
As regards the other problems with the venue - agreed. These things
should be better, particularly the dips in some pitches. But again,
there was nothing that the UKU could do with the bids we received. For
the intended 3 mixed and 6 (some split) O/W tournaments, we received 9
bids, 3 of which were from cardiff, and 2 of which were for the same
weekend in cardiff from different TDs. We had to chase up more bids just
to make these tournaments happen. Even if we had known that some of the
pitches weren't too flat, and that the shelter was poor, we'd probably
still have had to make the same choice of venue. The big problem is the
sheer unwieldy size of tours, and this is very much something we intend
to sort out next year. A great deal of discussion is under way about
solving many of the fundamental issues affecting tournament quality in
this country for 2010.
4 - I was continuously hunting for pitch water. Every single game.
Thankfully (!!!) we had an injured player with us who could act as
water boy and get the organisers to bring water to the fields for us.
No pitch water is unacceptable in my eyes, particularly given the heat
on Sunday.
I'm sorry that you had that experience. Personally, I played on 5 or so
different pitches, and had water next to every single one. This is poor
statistical evidence, granted, but given that Lewis has said much the
same thing it does appear that you were very unlucky. Again, it would be
nice if we could be perfect in this department, but with human error,
and the possibility that teams themselves move water bottles around from
pitch to pitch whilst the one from their own pitch is being filled, I
think it may be difficult. At the very least, I found the provision to
be vastly better than on some occasions that have previously attracted
BD opprobrium.
5 - Our first game on Sunday got moved and *nobody* bothered to tell
us. We only found out when there were three teams trying to warmup on
the same pitch... I understand that if something goes wrong and a
pitch becomes unusable then the schedule might need to be altered, but
the TDs *have* to take responsibility to notify the teams concerned.
Not to do so is simply unprofessional.
Now this we will take responsibility for. This was very much a case of
human error. The schedule was not changed after being sent to BD, and no
matches were moved. However, the copy sent to the TD to be printed out
was an earlier iteration of the schedule (it generally goes through
about 10 or 15 versions before we're happy with it), with some minor
differences - chiefly in terms of swapping pitches around to reduce the
walk between back to back games. Nobody at all was even aware of this
until the sunday morning - I met a very confused Felix trying to work
out how Fire could possibly be on pitch 1 in the 27v22 game or something
like that. After we realised the error, there was little we could do to
communicate it to all the people at the tournament. We informed the TD
desk, so that they could explain it to anyone who asked, but in the end
it just came down to the teams involved sorting it out as best they could.
We apologise for the error.
6 - I understand that some of the problems with scheduling were
related to the large number of teams on a small number of fields. The
simplest solution to this would be to hold the women's and open events
at different venues... was this considered?
No, because of the late notice that we actually had so few pitches.
7 - Some of the teams playing this weekend basically have been working
towards that tournament for months. Is there any reason we were left
so long to know the format (not the schedule but the tournament
format, i.e. who plays who)? For the geeks out there who like to plan
ahead, this information is useful! Besides, what if there'd been an
obvious problem with the format? There were a lot of discussions at
the weekend regarding the format, but because it was only released on
Friday afternoon there was no time to make changes if they were
needed. Most people's opinion was to then not bother complaining...
but not mine :-)
The short answer is that the scheduling committee did indeed find an
"obvious problem with the format", and so it was changed just a couple
of days before the tournament. Also, uncertainty about the number of
teams doesn't just make the schedule difficult, but also the format. If
we suddenly find that we have one spare team at the bottom of the
proposed format, then we have to rejig the format for the few teams
above that, which often means that other changes are forced and so on.
The answer is to keep A, B and C separate, but as previously mentioned
that was not done because of the split Tour 0. We wished to ensure that
every team got a fair and balanced schedule with an approximately equal
number of games, and this means the format cannot be completely decided
until fairly late.
On the other hand, I take your point, and we will endeavour to expedite
the publication of formats in the future - bearing in mind that this
will be easier for some tournaments than others.
If this is seriously the best that the UKU can do then I suggest a
coup. And before anyone says "well you do better" or similar:
firstly, I'm willing to try. Secondly, remember that not only did you
pay £180 entry fee per team for this event, but every single person
who wanted to play has to register with the UKU and pay £27.50 (unless
you're eligible for a discount) as well. That means that the people
who get this money (TDs and UKU) are accountable, and we have the
right to complain. Do you really think that you get value for money?
Clearly as a part of the UKU I'm in a somewhat biased position regarding
whether we should be first against the wall. What I will say is that, as
alluded to earlier, there are plans afoot to incentivise TDs in the
creation of far better tournaments for 2010. The fundamental problems
are the size of the tournaments and the lack of competition to host
them. Both will be addressed soon.
Special prizes available to those who bothered to read this far down. :-)
All the best,
Benji
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