Birmingham Bike Polo Chat & BS Thread

Is someone willing/able to help me lug some furniture on Saturday - probably 5/6pm? Should only be an hour (two at the most).

Will provide beer/fish n chips/wetherspoons dinner (delete as preferred)

Hi Dan,

Count in me in. Should have the giant car too if needed (depends on the MOT)...

danwentskiing Furniture lugging, Saturday 23 May, 5/6pm

1 Neil
2 Harry

Sorry Dan I'm visiting my brother this weekend.

Thanks Neil/Harry - just one person required (sorry should've been clearer). I'll have a van - it's just another body I need to lug the bigger stuff (bed/cupboard etc).

http://www.lfgss.com/comments/11802590/

Sorry, I'm away too.

Thought that might've been the case, Dan. I'm out!

danwentskiing Furniture lugging, Saturday 23 May, 5/6pm

1 Neil

I have a box of BHBPA stuff I need to clear out - tarpaulin, 20-ish le coq musettes, 5-ish womens tournament t-shirts, 10-ish caps, 20-ish wrist bands.

Can someone take it? If not it'll have to go to the tip

I'll have them...

Cool thanks. Will pass it over on Saturday.

Regarding the 16th June Centenary square 'polo demo', I've just received an email from the council, they are investigating insurance and so if I hear back in time I'll pass it on (assuming Matt/Mya can still make it - please let me know if not).

My other action was sorting heads - does anyone have a drawing?

JCC is confirmed for the 7th. The manager has gone on holiday for two weeks but I've told the staff that he said we can practice there and try and sort out the moss on the Sunday before (31st) and they said that'd be fine too... No money was mentioned so I assume that extra bit is for free!

Sorry for all the dull admin posts but I just spoke to JCC again and they said that they'll sort the moss this week. Hopefully they will do it before the weekend so we can test it out on Sunday. If not I will pester them some more.

Also we should think about how much we're going to charge people. There are 26 people on the google doc (2: North. 9: Northwest. 5: Us guys. 3: East. 7: West).

I'd like to suggest we also open it up to Londoners. What do other people think?

With those numbers we'd have to rethink the format. Chuck in some London players though and we could just make bench teams on the day.

Good work on JCC stuff Kat. What was the price again?

Sheffield is £10 each, would be good to be cheaper..

I'd like to keep to a city based bench - if other cities need to add London players to make a team, I don't mind that, as long as people don't get forced to include players they don't need.

I reckon let them in - they've done more than enough tournaments for us. It's a great idea to raise the standards of play of 'the regions' but there are very few tournaments this year at the moment so it just seems rude to exclude londoners

I'm happy to open it up to Londoners. Looking at it now there are more people registered (32). We only have 8 people but I think we can assume that will actually be 9 because of home team advantage so if we're saying bench with a maximum of 9 per team that currently leaves 12 spaces.

If we aim to start dead on 9 and have 45 minute games with quick turn-over we can probably just about fit in 10 games which would mean everyone could play everyone else once?

I agree with Neil. Londoners can sub into a team, but not form a team.

The spirit of these tournaments is to give 'Regionals' more practice, help them grow and giving newer players more court time without getting 5-0 in 3mins. If we're slightly low on numbers we could do an ABC.

I sorted the paypal password and also posted this on Facebook - Let me know if I've missed anything/got anything wrong.

"OK. So we have decent registration for the Brum edition of the TBC! We're looking forward to having everyone here.
To cement your place can you please pay £5 per player via PayPal to birminghambikepolo@gmail.com (Click send money to friends and then add your name AND city in the 'notes' box. Could you also state whether you want accommodation for the Saturday or Sunday night or both.
We'll be able to put anyone up who wants to stay and on the Saturday will have some pick up and/or a BBQ and then a party on the night or head to a Missy Elliot Vs Aaliyah night.
We might have to move a couple of people over to the EAST team if they don't have enough/other cities have too many. This will be chosen on who pays last so get your £5ivers over to us sharpish.
Format:
We'll be sticking to the regional bench format. However as our court only has one entrance we will be splitting each 40MINUTE bench game into 4 x 10 minute chukkas. every 10 minutes the game will stop for 1 minute and teams can switch players. After a goal there will ALSO be a 20 second change over period AND If there is a mechanical - a time out can be called (as normal) and a change can be made in this time out. In short: You can change players either after a goal, during a time out or after each 10 minute chukka.
First game - 9am
Gotta be off the court at 6 (latest)
Court postcode: B12 9FF
Leisure centre has toilets we can use and you can drink, but please be discreet.
Please remember your team colours:
SouthCentral - Black
North - White
Northwest - Yellow
West - Red
East - Blue
Any questions pop them in the comments."

Looks fine. Good work everyone!

Looking at the registration googledoc, we might want to put Brighton with East (canterbury) to even things up.

If I don't make it to polo tomorrow, can someone measure for how many boards we need? I can pick them up from the Bike Foundry in the week, when I get the goals.

I have a box from Dan with old UK champs t-shirts and le coq sportive caps in here, shall we give them away as prizes?

Court was good, we would just need boards to put at the bottom of the gate and possibly across the emergency exit door.

They haven't done anything about the moss yet but they said they would so I'll give them a ring midweek to check. I think if they don't actually do it I might go down there on Saturday with a broom and do it myself.

OK, so I'll bring goals and boards - can everyone bring a ball just in case?
Do we need to get everyone to sign a waiver?
I assume we'll enforce a helmets rule?