You are reading a single comment by @danwentskiing and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@danwentskiing
This will be my last (lengthy and boring) word on it, because I really don't want to stink up the thread (merge to a formatting/UK Champs discussion?) but this seems like the best place right now while it's fresh. And I'm really not as bitter as will come across (probably 20% bitter, but that's against a latent 10% bitterness so really only +10% bitter...).
If I'm right, 50% of the Round Robin teams have now said they can't go. As compared to 0% 'automatic qualified teams' and 0% of all teams who qualified for the main tournament. 66.6% of teams who qualified for the Wildcard and said they would go, now can't....
It seems to me like something is going on there.
Maybe some teams/individuals:
a) didn't book time off/make sure they can afford it before they said they *would go, *
b) liked the idea of playing 7 extra 'free' and competitive games enough to kind of fudge it - nobody's checking, right?
c) only wanted to go to the Euros it they qualified for the main tourney, and planned to pull out if they didn't make top-two in Round Robin.
I've already disclosed that I was in the c) camp, and that it wasn't really possible to point that out had we actually got through to RR.
Constructive suggestions:
1) We do something to weed out people in the a) camp. Of course we're not going to check bank balances and such, but perhaps a stronger request at the time of organising would have helped? Instead of saying 'will go' or 'would go', be more specific and say 'people who want to compete to qualify for the Euros must have booked time off work and have adequate funds'. It might not have any effect, but that way people would actually have to lie to their friends and fellow players, which is a different ballgame.
2) We create some kind of barrier to competing to discourage people from getting 'free games' - maybe pay more money, which is refunded if you qualify?*
3) We do something to weed these people out of the process as it becomes clear that they won't qualify for the main tournament. Had I qualified for RR and then lost the first 2 or 3 games (or whatever it takes, I'm not a maths guy) I'd have been totally happy to dive out if it made things fairer for other people. I'm not sure if that helps, but again, maybe someone smarter can suggest something?
4) If you're attempting to qualify as a team and you know one of your players can't go to the Euros, you should already have someone lined up who is ready/able/willing to be your third. (We had this in place, it's not that hard). By all means change that third person, but don't pull your entire team out because you thought you'd take a punt on a third player. Again, I don't know if that will help, it seems like teams that bailed had two players who couldn't go...
One final question, as I still am not persuaded by the arguments for draws (beside logistical ones) in Swiss, but would four rounds of Swiss without draws be 'fairer' than five rounds with draws? Maybe something along those lines would be better.
*I really don't like this idea because it's totally cuntish and against the spirit of tournaments, but maybe someone else can suggest something cleverer.
Rant over.