Euro Qualifiers 2013

There would be zero credibility attached in trying to enforce an already retrospective 'teams already confirmed for Paris 2012 are pre-qualified for next year' - especially if that notion came from one of those more fortunate teams'... ;-)

Well, the French decided it just a few months ago for their qualification system, so it does work.

And this idea was suggested a number of times over the last few months, I'm just raising it again.

Also, Rat Trap are not qualified for Paris.

Encouraging more UK teams to build, prepare and compete for a Euro/Worlds place should be an embodied principle, not a reluctant or begrudging eventuality! Enabling teams to play against each other including the elite is the only way the enlarging second tier will improve and challenge for higher honours.

And those are all great points, but they still don't deal with the reality of the situation, we simply don't have the combination of time/courts/money to do whatever people think is conceptually best, we need to deal with those realities first, before we look at nice to have things like "preparing" "second tier" teams. The Euro qualifiers is not a training weekend, and there is nothing stopping "second tier" teams arranged games against "elite" teams.

As we get more and more teams, the only option, with the current parameters, is to start tiering qualification, or get rid of the qualification tournament entirely.