Thunking Up the Queensland Club of the Year Award

Hey people,

In getting everything just right for the upcoming QUDA BASH, Maylin (bless her) asked a few people if a bit of award presenting would be appropriate.

Yes I said! And so I got to thinking, and decided that one thing that would be quite cool would be a "Queensland Club of the Year" Award.

But rather than the higher-effort approach for the AFDA Club fo the Year (which involves nominations addressing several on and off-field critera, then voting by the AFDA Board), I'd pinch some of Potty's work on Walkabout, which was about giving points for attending and succeeding in tournaments, and modify it to suit our Queensland environment.

A key thing I also want to do is that, aside from recognising the overall top club, is to recognise all the other clubs and what they've been up to. Perhaps they can aim to improve from year to year to generate some bragging rights.

So I've done my thinking and this is what I've got. I figured comments from the readers here might be useful, so your thoughts welcome. But I ask that you not spoil the surprise for the QUDA Bash by trying to work out the results for 2007 (which of course I will post here eventually)!

Guidelines - Qualifying Elements
- Clubs must play two tournaments, or have travelled over 700km for one tournament (we don't want "one-off" groups involved, but do want to ensure non-Brisbane efforts are recognised).
- Club must be majority Qld or NNSW players (to include Byron).
- Players may play for multiple clubs through the year, but only one club per event.
- Clubs may accrue additional points via multiple teams in the same event.
- A tournament must have at least four teams to be included, and be by open invitation/qualification (hence, NUFL not included, as only certain clubs can compete).

Guidelines - Determining Points
- Points are given for placing in relation to the size of the tournament. Bottom place gets x points, each placing above that gets x points, but to 10 teams.
- If there are more than 10 teams, the top points are 10x, and the points per placing distributed down to x points for bottom.
- Spirit points are given as y points per team at the tournament - so for example, winning spirit at a 8 team tournament is 8y points.
- There is a travel bonus to recognise that getting a team a distance takes more effort. 50km-700km is z points, 700-1400km is 2z points, more than 1400km is 3z points. (So you can see, Gold Coast/Byron/Townsville get recognised for getting to Brisbane, while all teams get recognised for travelling to Sydney/Adelaide/Perth/etc).

Test: Last Year's Club of the Year
Applying this to the *2006* results (with some small pieces of subjective judgement in the input stage), here's what I get:

1. Bootius Maximus 2991 points (success at Halibut and Mixed Nats + WUCC make it big)
2. UQ Lovers 2076 points (Halibut, Lovefest and AUGs success in Adelaide)
3. Dojo Mojo 1400 points (Regionals and Nationals success)
4. 74 Flood 1390 points (Regionals, Nationals, WUCC + spirit at Nats)
5. Sultry 1200 points (special for Regionals, Nationals + spirit at Nats)
6. Buggers 1150 points (Regionals and Nationals)
7. Shoot to Kill 1112 points (travelling and a good result at Halibut helps!)
8. Crikey 1065 points (travelling and a good result in Ballarat helps!)
9. Lounge Lizards 890 points (Halibut and Lovefest, but stayed in Brisbane)
10. QUTies 500 points (Lovefest and AUGs, but low results)
11. No Panda 400 points (travelling to Regionals gets them on the board)

Sound good?

I'm looking forward to announcing the 2007 result (pending Dusty getting me the Halibut results! C'mon Dusty!!). Clubs in the running seem to be the Pass (Byron), GU-nit, Bootius, Lovers, Firestorm, Sultry, QUTies, Lizards, Thor, Armidale Freeze and Concrete Donkey.