Having read a post over at the Canberra Blog whilst sitting in the pool room sipping some fine port, we here in the manor saw an idea that we thought could be potentially used in Brisbane, possibly for a short league that is more about fun than about club vs club.
The idea is to employ a draft system for a season of BPL/BUML/WUFL/New League. Basically, a set number of captains are nominated and selected, and all interested players come along one night and there are a series of pickup games so players can impress their potential captains. At the end of the night, everyone comes together and the captains pick their teams in a draft format.
As the Brisbane Ultimate community is a fairly tight knit bunch, this idea would possibly work. What we mean by this is that there isn't a lot of hate between clubs (ie. UQ & MBB) that people would be against playing on a team with people from "rival" clubs.
Potential Pros
1. Playing with a whole lot of new people.
2. Less "stacked" teams with all the good players being friends and forming one or two super teams.
3. Someone other than MBB might win the RC Dog Cup trophy (just being a bit cheeky here now).
Potential Cons
1. People may not feel as much of an attachment to their new team so may prioritise Ultimate lower than other tasks, making it harder to field a line consistently.
2. Individuals ending up on teams with other individuals that they aren't agreeable to playing with, thus potentially causing conflict between team mates or division within a team.
Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?
12 comments:
Oh JDR (nobody really believes this was written by Wetnose, do they?)...
I can only talk about BPL, but once every year or so someone raises the old "let's have drafted teams instead of clubs" issue, apparently without considering that a draft system is exactly the dim, dark past that BPL has finally dragged itself out of.
Maybe a draft-in, muckaround summer league could work between real BPL seasons - those of us that hate training could certainly use the exercise.
And maybe a draft-in system could be established for new players coming into BPL for the first time, not that there's any problem with evenness across the teams (the top 4, at least). And statistically you'd expect MBB to be in every final, given that their two teams make up half of the competitive teams playing at any given time...
Anyway, I'm sure I've got a lengthy old email somewhere from the last time (or the time before that) the draft-in idea was put down in BPL - probably should've just done a cut & paste job here to save writing all this down.
I thought about this idea a while ago when the NFL did their draft in the US. It would be cool to have the excitment around the draft like the americans do.
I think you could get alot of people excited about playing for new teams provided you sell it right. Heck, look at Slamball! Those teams are only a few years old and there are big ties to teams.... Its also the most insane sport i've ever seen created.
The cons unfortunately do make alot of sense RE: Dojo Buggers 05 (or is it 06?) nationals campaign
lol.
sensei I saved my emails that I recieved when the at face value were so controversial about women playing BPL.
Perhaps it is a good idea to throw out those emails why drafting is suh a bad idea so those young whippersnappers can see why the system we have now is a good one.
The top league division in Northern Sydney is being run as an "elite" draft this season. I think it's been a generally positive thing, but it was done specifically to address a problem with stacked teams and a lack of interest from a wider population to play at a higher level.
If there isn't an existing or emerging problem that _needs_ to be addressed, there's a risk that going to a draft will introduce other problems. Especially in a smaller ulti community, it might not be well received if people are happy with the way things are.
If it ain't broke...
Club/continuing teams should be encouraged. Brings the effort of recruiting down from the state FDA (or whoever) onto the club teams themselves. Also makes people more likely to stick around if they're playing with the same mates they played with last season.
BPL wants to kill the goose with the golden eggs?
You have teams with uniforms, reputations to defend, established leaders, known tactics and commitment from players to "their teams"?
And you want to end it? Seems like the experienced folk who have seen this done before know what you'll get.
Having a 4 week hat or draft league in between regular leagues is the best place to trial these things. That's where Sydney's NSL has them, and they are good for a break between leagues and for recruitment.
I remember how Sydney suffered when it had a hat/draft Men's league years ago. Attendance really suffers when you have no real commitment to the team. I would recommend league commissioners just vetoing super strong rosters instead of blowing up all the established teams.
AFL and NRL don't have hat teams every year - they have a salary cap (basically a device to prevent super strong rosters).
Want to play with new people? Go to any of the dozens of tournaments around the country.
The other 2 "pros" are the same point which can be addressed by minor tinkering. The list of cons is longer and heavier than it appears.
Just to clarify, there has been no discussion (nor can I see it happening) about BPL adopting a rostered format.
Owen, you are very correct in saying that the teams have uniforms, loyalty, ingrained strategies etc. that they wouldn't want to use.
Just something I thought I would put out there to see the feel of, rather than just putting BPL results & draws up.
well i can say for a short season it might work. But in the long run for teams to become viable they have to have a recruitment stream.
Buggers has KG/QUT/Mike, Dojo has the hospital/Griffith/Sensei great talents and UQ has america/That other State of America...Canada i think its called.
That leaves rawhide with well byron maybe and thats about it. This is why they struggle for numbers week in week out. So until some players on other teams jump ship they will slowly disolve into nothingness if they cant get some sort of recruiting done.
So... for the well established BPL, it seems that most people agree it's not a good idea to mess this up...?
I know there was serious talk about having the division A of the mixed intermediate league as a "hat"ed league. As this season was the first to separate the league to A and B divisions, a certain amount of transfer of people between divisions / teams may have to be done. This could be a good time to make the further changes... hat the A division. If three quarters of the teams are kept in divB as the first time slot in the evening...this leaves 1/4 room for beginner growth; and the second time slot of individual selected players in divA, where some could do both and be leaders of B. The idea was proposed to improve the quality of A and improve everyone's game by playing with different people rather than the same people for years. My question to you (anyone): Would the quality of Ultimate in Brisbane and of div A be really improved by this or possibly will a lack of attendance take over? Are 2 time slots annoying for most people or is it a good thing as you could possibly go down for 2 games (teaching + 1 hard game). Other comments?
I reckon it would be a good fun league between seasons but really isn't viable in terms of dividing up the current teams.
What I think would be a very good idea is drafting out of interested players from monday night league using a well thought out system of draft picking to make sure that all the good talent doesn't end up on one team.
I think ultimately it can destroy the incentive to recruit ...
Apart from the unigames, the main reason we recruit for UQ is to get them into BUML, and get them into BPL.
Once they're there we have a team structure that supports our recruiting process.
I'm not saying don't have a hat laegue in between traditional formats, or on another night, but destroying club connections is not going to help in terms of recruitment.
I know I'm a bit behind the times on this string of comments, but just to clarify from the Canberra end. We were not actually looking at running a draft at all. We've had a draft here for ages and it's something we're keen to move away from. The option I was writing about on the CUB was to have captains go out and form whatever teams they wanted. But, since we were looking to pull new players into the top league in the ACT, we were going to run some informal try-outs to give new players a chance to strut their stuff. Basically, the try-outs idea was just a way to ensure that whatever new teams got formed had a good way of finding talented rookies and to try to keep our top league from become a bunch of cliques.
So, we were looking for a way of moving away from drafts while still encouraging captains to pick new players based on merit rather than whether they'd seen each other before.
In any case we went with another model because the league was so short but it's something I'd like to try in future.
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