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I am having a great deal of trouble parsing Kev's post. Is that because I have a hangover, or does it really not make sense?

just cross your eyes a bit, it'll appear in 3D

Although LOBP is populated by assholes, it is also (a) supposed to be the international bike polo forum and, in any case, is (b) where the Euros were formally announced (I think)..

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially when you put your asshole hat on when you in particular put your asshole hat on when you log in to LOBP. :-)

In reality 90% of the content on LOBP is positive, and some of the 10% is pretty hilarious. some of the 10% is really boring and dumb.

France is 5-0. They beat Italy 14-4, Germany 9-8, and Spain 11-9. i think.

Surely there is a very fine line between a ball joint and a scoop pass?

a ball joint pins the ball against the ground, scoops don't.

I was hoping for more of a finale

Looks like Todd's really been packing on the pounds of recent

Yea that move by capriotti is real nice where he pushes off leon and gets the ball is exactly why we need to keep contact in this sport.

meanwhile, NAH is wrestling with how to deal with clean shoulder checks that push people over the boards, either by making it illegal, or mandating 4 foot high boards at NAH tournaments.

That was actually the first video of a polo game I have watched all the way through without skipping. Really enjoyed watching Beaver Boys, great team, good positioning (for the most part), good link-ups.

the teams met two more times over the course of the weekend, i'll be posting those videos soon.

snoops glad you picked up on the "safety buffer" heckle. hilarious.

Most of those goals hit the net at least a foot in the air. Chip shot.

those shots were all insane. i'm not sure what you mean by chip shot, but they mostly involved a windup.

ain't no frenchies on DTGP

ya we changed our name to "In Your Face Mutherfucker (Maybe)" halfway through.

what a surprise, jonny hunter gets the arse and for what? Cause he sticks his mallet under guthries wheel and it results in guthrie going down and taking him with him.

actually that's ben. notice how they were then given possession and immediately scored GWG? oh well. another 4th place for me...

There's a chance i'll be in France, and if so, i'd be stoked to play at this, in case some one else has to cancel. Email me cause i won't get your PM.

Define 'European team'.

crickets

eventually, i bet we'll probably phase out NAHBPC and EHBPC, and just have a World Championships and buttload of kickass tournaments. but that's an argument to have at a later date.

The North Americans divide their continent up into a number of regions and then have a tourney within those regions. This seems the fairest to me. Within regions there could be a bidding process, voting process, or whatever, to decide the location.

actually this isn't true, as it causes many of the same problems as national borders. we will ensure that the qualifying tournaments are regionally spread out, but you can play at any of them.

we've divided up by regions only in order to ensure a somewhat geographically representative group of people who are making decisions.

BTW these numbers are not final. Seattle will have 6 courts, and a wildcard tourney like in Berlin, so these numbers are likely to be much higher. Probably 48 qualified, and a large wildcard tourney for the last 16 spots. But don't quote me on that. We'll know more in a few months

Yeah.
It would be too difficult to put 4 tournaments where the most part of Euro community could come for 2011. Maybe 2012.
We could maybe think the stuff 50/50 this year, give one or two slot for firsts places in 2 or 3 majors tourneys, and the rest is selected nationally.
But whitout any european body, it looks difficult to make this happens.

Agreed, it might be too late.

I thought i'd sum up my arguments against a strict geographical qualification system, in the form of questions that cannot be answered in any satisfying way, in my opinion. ( I'm not looking for a gut emotional answer to any of these, which is what i usually get in response to such questions, but something in the form of a policy that can be universally applied. )

1. Do you have to "swear allegiance" to a local or national polo scene for a calendar year or some other period? Who's going to keep track of that (consider that London has way more such organizing capacity as other cities/countries). Can Cosmic Todd qualify as a Dutch player? Can Rik still play as Rotten Apples (RIP)? Can Guthrie and I still play with DTGP, one of the longest running teams in polo?

2. Are you not allowed to have a player on your team from outside your region? That would kill 50% of the best teams in North America. This cross-breeding/cross-pollinating is what is driving the skill level in our sport, and it will suffer if it's tied to local cities or regions or countries. We've finally started to see some of these multi-city top-level teams recently in Europe at the BFF tourneys and it sounds like it's been awesome. (Football makes a good comparison, where club play is where the sport evolves, not national teams.).

3. Does your team need to remain the same between tournaments? Which tournaments? What happens if someone gets hurt or doesn't have enough cash to travel? Think about how much drama you have in London when someone needs a sub for a league match. Shit what happens when TWO players get hurt? Most of these questions get answered on a case-by-case basis, which works somewhat at the local level, but gets more and more complicated as we scale up.

4. What if you're the best player in your country but you have to miss your nat'l championships? No EHBPC or WHBPC for you? What if you're Pierre from DTGP, you break your wrist the day before the French championships, and don't qualify? (oh yea, you go to NAHBPC, get top ten, then go to WHBPC and get top ten).

Are the answers to these questions above necessarily the same for all countries? Or is each country allowed to come up with its own system? What if the UK says you can't qualify via the UK if you've already tried qualifying as a Dutch or German player (i'm thinking Todd/Rik), but the Netherlands decides that it's cool, you can be promiscuous with your polo citizenship?

1. Finally, How many teams per country? Clément did what i thought was a killer job last year given the circumstances, but it was pretty arbitrary and therefore the source of plenty of bitching and whining. It's going to be that much harder this year, with more countries. Also, what if you live in a country with incompetent people who run the nat'l bike polo scene, or run it in some corrupt way?
   
   

In short, i'm of the opinion that drama/controversy shouldn't be outsourced from the regional level to the city level, or from the global level to the national level. Let's keep that shit at the highest levels of the sport where it belongs, and base it on skill level not citizenship.

"Maximum damage, minimum scandal", right?

the bigger the better! we use 4m in toronto. safer, gives tons of room to set up an attack, great behind the goal passing, etc.

i can't think of any good reasons to have a short distance other than the excitement of errant slapshots shots bouncing off the back board for further scoring opportunities.

We're working on our bid to host one of the NAH major tournaments or the worlds.

Fuck ya!

NAH, the North American Hardcourt organizing body, put out this proposal about 6 weeks ago and emailed a ton of people around the world with it: http://leagueofbikepolo.com/forum/organizing-polo/2010/08/09/to-the-poloverse-from-na-hardcourt-a-proposal-for-whbpc-2011

Since there was no opposition, and lots of support via email, phone, and that thread, the NAH is basically taking on this decision-making responsibility for 2011.

There is no reason, of course, that Guadalajara couldn't put in a bid, but i think it's good to have a (somewhat) democratic representative body that has had a lot of success this year figure this out, i.e., review bids, vote, etc.

As Roxy wrote on that LOBP thread, we should really be figuring these things out 2 years in advance. Since it's unlikely to take place in N.A., some people had better get together to figure out how to ... figure this out for 2012. I'm sure NAH would be happy to be involved but definitely shouldn't be leading it.

Rik you gave the warmest welcome when i showed up for that Shoreditch tourney in 2008 so you will always be the face of london polo for me. but now i have yet another excuse to visit Berlin.

it was a pretty boring game and the crowd was unengaged except the dozen that were heckling seattle. i blame the fact that it was after 3 drunken days of 32 degree weather, 400+ polo games, so everyone was wilted at this point. very anticlimactic. but as far as crowds there were actually 3 or 4 rows of people on the side behind the camera and behind the goal to the left.

Yep, if team with the power play scores, the team killing the penalty gets their third player back.

What was the reffing standard like at the ESPIs?

I've heard some bitching about one interference call (In favour of Doug et al) which changed the outcome of one particular game, but I've heard nothing about the reffing for any of the other games?

There was some particularly biased (in my opinion) reffing by a NYC ref against Smile during a round robin game, but Smile still won 16-4, so who cares. i didn't see that play involving Doug.

The biggest difference between what London pioneered for EHBPC2009 and the refs at ESPIV was that the refs at ESPIV had whistles, and used them. When there was an infraction, the whistle was blown, play stopped, and one of the penalties was imposed (change of possession, 1 minute or 2 minute penalty). On average i'd say this happened once every four games, though in my opinion it should have happened every other game, there were definitely a few things left uncalled. One ref in particular preferred to give verbal warnings, his perspective on this was that a warned player never repeated whatever offense.

The disadvantage with this system is that play stops.

The advantage is that there is no bickering while play is still going, and you don't have a situation where all 6 players are trying to understand WTF the ref is saying ("who, me?") while playing is still going on. I've seen this cause all kinds of problems, especially since refs are rarely mic'd.

Personally, i think that it should be 30 secs for minor penalties, 1 minute for majors, 2 minutes for something really major, because 2 minutes almost guarantees a goal for the other side. I think that'll be the system for NAHBPC, but it's not confirmed yet.

It can't be obstruction. There is only 3 of us, one is in goal, on is attacking the attcker the other is trying to get in an offensive and defensive position to receive a pass or pave the way for their team mate. No other sport we mention is only 3 players. Other rules from other sports just aren't applicable, the scenarios will never match up.

Exactly, pave the way for their mate, best way to put it. That video from BAD vs polosynthese demonstrates it best.

In all tournaments i've played with Hugo in Europe i've obstructed my opponents a ton to let Hugo get a good shot.

But i've stopped doing it for a bunch of reasons

1) it's boring. watching a striker go up and score on a goalie does not exciting polo make. i'd rather see tight passing and smart plays.
2) it encourages off-ball contact. The player being obstructed, in my opinion, has every right to try to plow through (shoulder vs shoulder) the player obstructing him/her, in a sense it expands the "on ball" area.
3) you don't need to be a good polo player to do obstruction.

This was called about 5 times at Bench Minor (50 players) and about 5 times at ESPI 5 (150 players). The best argument against it is that it adds an additional rule. Obviously i like it but it's not that important, i can live without it. I think the best teams don't run obstruction anyway.

Finally, i think you all should check out the penalty system from ESPI5, which is going to be modified for NAHBPC. So much better than having refs trying to enforce penalties while the game is going, and distracting all 6 players in doing so.