National Series 2011

but, which team refs? seeing as there are 2 per game.

Can we track alternating teams (imagine it as home/away), so the "home" team provides the refs, then their next game is "away"? Or Home=goal refs, away=line refs?

it's not 'fucking around', it's discussing how you are going to play the game so it is better to play and watch.

I would rather do that off the court, but if I'm reffing the previous 10 minutes then it would be difficult.

But you probably know who your opponent is a good while in advance, so theres plenty of off court time to figure it out. Why not Talk off court>Ref>Play rather than Ref>Talk on court and waste everyone elses time>play?

I have no problem with reffing the game that does not immediately precede my own.

Reffing pre-game is good in theory, it ensures the teams are ready to go and allows better scheduling. Although in Cambridge games were held up by refs not being ready/aware, so maybe it causes more problems (personally I'd rather ref 5 games in a row and then step down for the day than do several stints of it).

I agree that reffing 5 games in a row is preferable, but during Swiss rounds / round-robin on multiple courts this is not possible (as we found out in Brighton).

Can we track alternating teams (imagine it as home/away), so the "home" team provides the refs, then their next game is "away"? Or Home=goal refs, away=line refs?

The easiest solution is to toss a coin.

.... a faux par,....

Is that what happens when Tempa T makes a social blunder?

Looks like I made a faux pas writing about faux pas, allow it bruv

Can we track alternating teams (imagine it as home/away), so the "home" team provides the refs, then their next game is "away"? Or Home=goal refs, away=line refs?

This weekend in Sheffield on the Saturday we relied somewhat on goodwill. On the Sunday, we'd put all the fixtures into Challonge, and whichever team was named first in the fixture reffed the next fixture.
e.g. Team A vs Team B play
Team A refs Team C vs Team D
Team C refs team E vs Team F

Overall, all the games got reffed. Thanks to you all.

Standings updated: http://www.nationalseries.org.uk/

(Seriously, if anyone has any time to make the site look halfway decent let me know).

Why did Josh, Alex and Emmet play as Phils stag do?

If they had played as Multiple Scoregasm they would be well up the leaderboard.

I couldn't remember whether Jack or Josh played with Tornadoes in Brighton. It was Jack though right? I'll sort that.

It was Jack in Brighton with Tornadoes.

Josh with Multiple Scoregasm.

Done

Why did Josh, Alex and Emmet play as Phils stag do?

If they had played as Multiple Scoregasm they would be well up the leaderboard.

When the opportunity to play with Phil comes up, you never turn it down

Woohoo, 15th best team in the UK right now

#itsofficialsomustbetrue

i like the name phils stag do

When the opportunity to play with Phil comes up, you never turn it down

Well now that James has sorted it you're top7 in the UK!

On the Sunday, we'd put all the fixtures into Challonge, and whichever team was named first in the fixture reffed the next fixture.
e.g. Team A vs Team B play
Team A refs Team C vs Team D
Team C refs team E vs Team

That works. And it doesnt involve an extra cointoss every game. How does Challonge choose which team is listed first in subsequent rounds? Does it track/alternate them, for example, or choose the first team from the list that was entered, or the highest ranked?

#curious, because if I was designing the perfect tourney software, tracking/alternating/forcing a home/away team would have all sorts of uses, from basic home/away courts e.g.League1, to fairly allocating uneven up/downhill/courts with obstacles, to exactly this sort of even and transparent allocation of reffing team. Maybe thats what Challonge does?

Bristol to host a NS tourney in September. I will post details in a new thread once I am out of the 'nursery'!! (have to post 3 times on the forum to get permission to post and new thread)!!

Sweet!

During Edinburgh there was a discussion about the "standard" approach for NS events with regard to format (one final or two for double elim), court size, court surface, etc.

It would be good to get this all written down somewhere as I was under the impression that the NS simply aides scenes with pulling a tournament together and tallies the scores? Maybe put something up on the NS site if someone with the skills can volunteer?

As it stands I believe the decision lies with the tournament organiser, for example: I (well, Mark) will be working out scheduling, format and final for the London Open, please advise if this is not the case.

I think it's potentially asking quite a lot to "control" the format of a tournament (and could cause issues in the future), but I do like the minimum standard/default approach that the NS can nurture.

re: the reffing stuff. Second NS tourney for me at Brizzle and cant wait to ref :)

Organisers are the ultimate authority.

We had a discussion about whether a team HAS to take a reset. If i am going on goal, and the other team fouls, often I would be disadvantaged to take a reset right there, example being when Josh fell on the ball in the final yesterday. There was nothing he could have done to stop from falling on the ball, but to reset meant Cosmic lost their posetion in the goal area that they had. Can the ref call advantage untill loss of posetion and then call a reset?

I would have called advantage, but Snoops looked to me to make the call and Nice Touch went after the loose ball behind the goal.

In hindsight I should have shouted to Snoops to play on (no whistle, ref's arm in the air) and then called the advantage foul on ball turnover. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I nearly took Josh out for 30 seconds to try and "recreate" the situation again (a chance on goal) but I was unclear if the ball was stopped by his sliding wheel/bike (kind of ok in my head) or foot/body (not ok) and went with the former. Again it's one of those times where you want to say "it didn't look like he meant to do it", but intention shouldn't have anything to do with the call.

I try to avoid calling goals when the ball hasn't hit the net (I'd rather take a player out for 2 minutes to even the score), sometimes it's appropriate though if there is little time on the clock (to get the goal back). As with everything in polo, we need to develop the rules further (like extending the game time to cover penalties, etc), I liked Manchester's thoughts about "ball dumping" in edinburgh too (even though it hasn't really been used as a cheating method much yet), I digress.

Essentially all refs should only stop the game if the team in the wrong is in possession of the ball, otherwise stick your arm in the air (showing that you're calling advantage) and call the foul once the ball turns over to the other team (or forget the foul after enough time has passed, etc). It's hard to do this all the time, keeping the whistle away from your mouth helps.

But yeah, it sucks if the ref stops the game for your team but you feel like you don't need it (this happened to us in Barcelona), I reckon this will get better over time as we all become better refs. If you feel like you've been penalised on a ball turnover, have a polite chat with the ref after the game so they can learn from it, etc.