[BD] B tour crossovers (again)

[karl bater]

Pretty much the exact point I made after T1 yet got no comments or reply...

Karl "Monkey Head" B.


>From: Ben Heywood <bgh at st-and.ac.uk>
>To: britdisc at near.me.uk
>Subject: [BD] B tour crossovers (again)
>Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 13:25:15 +0100
>
>Sorry to labour the point (after all that email traffic after tour 1) but 
>I'd like to complain about the lack of crossovers at tour 3. I foolishly 
>didn't check the schedule when it was sent out, since the crossover issue 
>had been addressed at tour 2. I didn't foresee the crossovers disappearing 
>again, so sorry I didn't make this complaint before the tournament...
>
>Anyway, it remains my belief that crossovers (at least) are necessary on 
>the B-tour. Teams are hugely variable from tour to tour in a way which is 
>not seen on the A tour. If the best three players turn up, a team can 
>easily rise 15 places from one tour to the next. The format has to allow 
>for this.
>
>Specifically, this weekend: We (abstract, 3rd seeds) were in a pool with 
>Bristol 2 (13th seeds) and Brixton (20th). Bristol took 8 players to tour 
>2, and 16 players to this one. Bit of a difference there. Brixton weren't 
>at tour 2, so they were underseeded too.
>
>If Brixton had won their sudden-death game against bristol, we'd have been 
>in the bottom 8. In fact, we ended up in the middle 8. We lost one game all 
>weekend, and came 9th. We played our OWN SECOND TEAM in the plate final 
>(for which we AGAIN didn't receive a plate, goddammit... why aren't they 
>being awarded this season?)
>
>Bristol only missed a place in the final on a three-way tie, and yet 
>Brixton, who lost to them 15-14, couldn't finish higher than 17th. Is there 
>anybody out there who could seriously suggest that they 'suck it up'?
>
>CROSSOVERS ARE AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY!!!!
>
>In fact, as I've said before, my (infinitely) preferred option would be to 
>have more (shorter) games on the saturday. An open 24 team format cannot be 
>decided fairly with six games each.
>
>We'd still get to play proper 90 min games on the sunday for qf sf f in 
>each group of eight, and there'd be some chance that the right teams would 
>actually be in each of these brackets.
>
>As I remember it, the arguments against shorter games on the B-tour mostly 
>revolved around the difference in TOTAL pitch time between the A and B 
>tours - not many people were hugely upset about the specific fact that we 
>didn't play 90 min games.  There are such big differences in skill and 
>experience between the top and bottom of the B-tour that a large proportion 
>of saturday games don't need anything like 90 mins to decide.
>
>And in case anyone wishes to point out that by this stage of the season the 
>seedings should be fairly accurate, look at it this way - if the seedings 
>are accurate, the pools are a waste of time, since positions won't change. 
>And on those occasions when positions do change in a pool, it's absolutely 
>inevitable that one team will get f****d over. In no respect whatsoever is 
>a tiny-pool (3 teams), non-crossover format a justifiable choice.
>
>Benji
>
>
>__________________________________________________
>BritDisc mailing list
>BritDisc at ranulf.net
>http://mailman.ranulf.net/mailman/listinfo/britdisc
>Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp

_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live™ Messenger has arrived. Click here to download it for free! 
http://imagine-msn.com/messenger/launch80/?locale=en-gb