From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk Wed Apr 10 02:06:19 2002 Received: from daffodil.csv.warwick.ac.uk (root@daffodil [137.205.192.30]) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g3A16Id13796 for <suaaz@mail.csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 02:06:18 +0100 (BST) Received: from agave.csv.warwick.ac.uk (root@agave [137.205.192.52]) by daffodil.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g3A11P708406; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 02:01:25 +0100 (BST) Received: from agave.csv.warwick.ac.uk (daemon@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by agave.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.12.0/8.12.0) with ESMTP id g3A0p1QR011520 for <britdisc-outgoing@agave.csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 01:51:02 +0100 (BST) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by agave.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.12.0/8.12.0/Submit) id g3A0p068011517 for britdisc-outgoing; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 01:51:00 +0100 (BST) Received: from snowdrop.csv.warwick.ac.uk (root@snowdrop [137.205.192.31]) by agave.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.12.0/8.12.0) with ESMTP id g3A0oxQR011512 for <britdisc-real@majordomo.csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 01:50:59 +0100 (BST) Received: from anchor-post-35.mail.demon.net (anchor-post-35.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.93]) by snowdrop.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g3A0owt20427 for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 01:50:59 +0100 (BST) Received: from ultimatum.demon.co.uk ([158.152.203.174]) by anchor-post-35.mail.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1) id 16v6K9-0009zb-0Z for britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk; Wed, 10 Apr 2002 01:50:58 +0100 User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2022 Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 01:50:49 +0100 Subject: Re: Regionisations From: Paul Hurt <paul@ultimatum.demon.co.uk> To: BritDisc <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B8D94AF7.13AF3%paul@ultimatum.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.4.21.0204092245250.7429-100000@poseidon.atm.ox.ac.uk> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Just a couple of points before I go to bed... 1) IMHO, "city leagues" have real potential to expand the player base beyond the tournament-hardened crowd we have now. Your korfball analogy is right on the money. The trick is achieving a critical mass of teams/players within one city (though to me, three teams is critical mass! Double round-robin. Then the following year you can aim for four. Build it and they will come). You need a good number of experienced players to form the core of the league. So that pretty much counts out summer weekends (when most will want to play at tournaments - or even have a weekend off when there's no tournament). Making it weeknights means that you can't cast the net too wide, geographically speaking - people have to be able to get to the fields, play the game, hit the pub, and get home in time to get up for work again the next day. We're lucky enough to have sufficient players in London to make this work with Summer League - games are competitive, and most players can stay out until closing time and still get home. Maybe Oxford could manage it. Perhaps Bristol. Edinburgh? OTOH, London's Winter League worked at weekends because of Roger's commitment to the idea, because teams wanted to play outdoors all year round, and because there was nothing else going on ;-) (Spoken like a true Clapham player.) Not the easiest time of year to introduce new players to the game though. 2) If you're suggesting regionalising the Tour, that would defeat much of the object of the excersise - if the top teams ended up in different regions they would not get the high level play they need to remain competitive internationally. 3) I've always thought that "fun tournament" date clashes are a good thing, as long as the tournaments aren't both at the same end of the country. That way, you get "regionalisation" without any extra effort, more tournaments squashed into the year, more space for new teams to come and play (and possibly without getting crushed by 80% of the opposition). How does not having all the "top teams" at a tournament make it any less fun? 4) Beware of one-day tournaments if dragging teams in from far and wide - currently, much of the appeal of Ultimate to new players is the social/party side of things, which is seriously undermined if you're having to spend Saturday night getting home. We had that with the British Ultimate League back in the early eighties - didn't work all that great. Ramble mode off. :-) Paul