So I've been meaning to put my hand up again to run Northern Regionals. I'm assuming nobody will complain ;)
What this means at this stage is booking some fields - so check out the new poll function on the right there.
But I also wouldn't mind fostering a bit of thinking beforehand about what the Northern Region wants out of this event (Northern Region being North Queensland, South Queensland and the Northern Territory, plus folk from Northern NSW (Byron, Armidale) who have the option of qualifying for Nationals via either Northern Regionals or Eastern Regionals.
Officially, Northern Regionals, like the other Regionals events, is required by the national body to enable the qualification of teams (and players) to attend Nationals. In practice, the Northern Region produces two teams that get to go to Nationals, and for players, if you played on one of those teams at Regionals, you must play with them at Nationals. If you played with some other team at Regionals, you can play with any team that will have you at Nationals.
For our region though, we've generally been able to organise ourselves to ensure we have the two teams to fill the two slots (in both Open and Women's). Hence, Northern Regionals has been about having an event to satisfy AFDA - and of course, its good for us to have an Open/Women's event on the calendar in Brisbane [note assumption that Northern Regionals will be in Brisbane for the foreseeable future].
Assuming that we're going to continue this way in 2008, I figure we should ask ourselves if there's a better way to do it than in 2007.
In 2007, the Open Division featured five regoed teams, which became four at the start of day 1. Two of the teams intended to go to Nationals and featured most of the stronger players in the region. The third was a small number of stronger players who weren't going to Nats, and the fourth was a fairly weak pickup team.
The event did its job in generating two teams for Nationals, but it was pretty lop-sided. I can't help thinking that perhaps we couldn't do it differently, although I guess at least the Nats-bound teams benefited from two days running around together, even if against some weaker opposition.
Perhaps we could make the event more of a hard-training and/or even selection event? Players register as individuals, indicating whether they also want to go to Nationals (but certainly lots of not-Nats players welcome, as its our ONLY Open tournament of the year). The Brains-Trust pick teams with an eye to generating two teams for Nationals (whether thats A/B or X/Y or something else is up to them) but also to making sure we have a good hard tournament (ie with reasonably even teams where possible). If there are more players wanting to go to Nats than there is space on two teams, then the event also becomes a selection event.
This may be an event that's inviting particularly to newer players, for example from the Universities (including now Gold Coast Griffith). And it should ideally also link to BPL, with BPL teams 'scouting' for players at this event.
I think this is what Sultry did with their one day of Regionals, and in addition they were very open to new players (I suspect for an Open tournament people wouldn't be keen for rank-beginners).
Anyway, enough rave. What do YOU think?
