Benji, May I congratulate you and every one working hard on all players behalf to keep the Tour at the forefront of the development of competitive Ultimate in the UK.
Could I ask that you and the committee working on this to offer some enlightenment on where this might lead to next year. Perhaps you could have a statement of the intended changes or a draft of ideas ready for all the members of the UKU by the end of this season? I respect that there are a lot of volunteer hours going in here (and admit that I do not wish to step up to the plate on Tour scheduling) but I do think we have reach a point where our national organisation needs to start thinking 2 - 3 years ahead to be fair to the members. We are beginning to reach a point where by the networks disseminating the information from the UKU are extending quickly but the flow of information is not increasing. I say this because I find an increasing number of players with Tour experience that are not on BD and do not read the UKU Updates. I would like to note I do appreciate the current changes going to to draw the European teams over to the UK and I see UKU making great gains in its organisation and structure. So please carry on but plan and communicate a little further ahead. Scraggy On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 10:10 AM, UKU Director of Competitions < [email protected]> wrote: > Just a reminder that the Birmingham venue will host the top 32 teams for > Tour 2, meaning all those who played T1 in London (except the 5 > non-returning European teams) and the top 13 teams from Bishop's Cleeve. > Other teams, and Women's, will be in Burton. > > I don't imagine there will be drop-outs at that top level, but if any team > amongst that top 32 is not intending to attend T2, please get in touch very > very soon so that we can bump someone up. > > Cheers, > Benji > > > UKU Director of Competitions wrote: > >> BD, >> >> A note about tournament formats for this season, and an explanation. >> Long-winded no doubt, but you should see the amount of discussion that's >> gone into this. >> >> The competitions committee are very much behind the idea of keeping a >> separate identity for the A,B and C tour - it seems to us that most people's >> imaginations have been caught by the divisional structure and that most >> people refer to themselves as 'an A tour team' or 'a B tour team' and so on. >> The divisions also allow simple schedules to be written for at least the top >> 32. >> >> However, for this year, there are some difficulties - of our own making, I >> suppose, but we didn't see them coming. For Tour 1, we expected 8 European >> teams, and took the obvious decision to extend T1 A to 24 teams. This will >> enable us to run perhaps the best Tour event the UK has seen, but it has >> some knock-on effects. >> >> We actually have 7 non-UK teams, but in fact 2 of them are intending to >> play the whole tour, and thus are not really foreign teams at all under the >> rules. In particular, they'd expect to hold their seed for T2. So instead of >> the planned 16 UK and 8 Euro teams, we actually have 19 fully-fledged tour >> teams at T1 A. Thus, in order to have 3 promoted from the B-tour for T2, >> we'd have to relegate 6 teams. That's clearly too many. >> >> Reducing the number promoted is also not appealing, since T1 is not >> guaranteed to be well-seeded. And in order to have just our normal 3 >> relegated, we'd have to promote no-one at all. >> >> The possibility of making A-tour 2 larger is unfair on the TD for the >> C-tour 2 and Women's who would lose 4 teams' cash - significant money. >> >> So we've taken the decision that Tour 2 (with A&B co-located) will be a >> 32-team format with some crossing over possible around what would normally >> be the A-tour and B-tour boundary. This will give all the teams the chance >> to find their level. The top 8 will of course remain peer-pooled - this is >> an issue around the 16/17 barrier, and we don't want or need to change >> things for the top teams. >> >> There is also a similar problem with B&C tour 1 - only 13 teams can get >> into that top 32 for T2, and the same things apply to promotion and >> relegation as above. To get 3 C-tour teams promoted, we have to relegate 6. >> And that means those 6 miss out on playing with the top 32 at T2 and go to a >> different venue, which is a big thing. >> >> So again, we have taken the decision to remove some boundaries from Tour 1 >> B&C. There will be a top 8 (peer-pooled), a middle 16 in 4 pools of 4 >> (across the important 9-24 bracket that determines getting into the top 32 >> for T2) and a bottom 12, followed by the chance to crossover between these >> brackets. >> >> Hopefully that all makes sense. And hopefully the big tournament with all >> those non-UK teams will be so excellent that it's all worth it. >> >> Cheers, >> Benji >> >> __________________________________________________ >> BritDisc mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc >> Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed >> >> > > __________________________________________________ > BritDisc mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc > Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed > __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
