Friday, December 09, 2011

State Titles (aka Northern Regionals) Info Announced!

From the press release:

G’day Queenslanders,

I’m pleased to announce that the 8th Queensland Open and Women’s Ultimate Championships 2012 (aka Northern Regionals), will be held at Griffith University Nathan campus in Brisbane , on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 March 2012. The event will be hosted as a fundraiser by the Griffith University Ultimate Club, with oversight by QUDA.

Open Division
The Open event will run approximately 9am-5pm both days, similar to previous years. We anticipate 6-8 teams, from Brisbane , the Gold Coast, Townsville, Cairns and Gympie, of which 3-4 will be seriously seeking to qualify for Nationals (all teams of course will be keen to play well!). If you are an ‘unaffiliated’ Brisbane player, I encourage you to consider offering your services and experience early to our developing regional groups - we want to see every Ulti-lad in Queensland playing this event!

Women’s Division
As we only anticipate 2-3 Women’s teams will seek to play the event for the purposes of qualifying for Nationals, the Women’s event is currently anticipated as involving a all-skill-level Women’s Hat on Saturday (which may include some development sessions) and a short qualification tournament on Sunday (which may frankly be a game of Black Betty 1 vs Black Betty 2 to provide Nationals ranking). QUDA is currently considering providing further support for regionally-based women to attend, as well as new player recruitment material. We want to see every Ulti-lass in Queensland playing this event! More details to come.

Registration and Fees
Team and player registration is now open at: http://afda.com/rego/showcompetition.php?competitionid=1147

QUDA-approved player fees will be confirmed approximately one month before the event. As per previous years, in recognition of the flight costs involved and QUDA’s role in promoting the sport state-wide, North Queensland-based players will not be required to pay a player fee.

Timing, Qualification and Rostering
Teams which are using the event to qualify for Nationals 2012 in Newcastle should be aware of the AFDA’s qualification policies and requirements.

Please note that our event will be one week before Eastern, Southern and Western Regionals, which will be held on 10-11 March. The AFDA Board has agreed with our request to host the 2012 event early, to allow our teams to gain match practice at those other Regionals, should they wish.

Equally, this provides an opportunity for interstate teams and players to come and play at our event. This improves our event, but I should note a few things to ensure the spirit of Nationals qualification is maintained, specifically:
- interstate teams and players seeking to qualify for Nationals via their own region will not be counted in terms of wildcard slot qualification
- Queensland teams seeking to qualify for Nationals should not pick up interstate players who would be qualifying for Nationals via their own region (as this would screw up our local qualification process)
- Because this is nonetheless our State Championship, non-Nationals bound teams should limit any interstate pickup players to three or less.
If you have any issues with regard these ideas, please get in touch. We’re learning.

After Nationals 2012, AFDA is considering reviewing the Regionals/Nationals system with the possibility of allowing different Regionals on different dates in a permament sense, so how this all goes for Northerns may prove an interesting test.


So mark those calendars, get on a team, and we look forward to it!

Jason de Rooy
QUDA Executive Officer and Griffith Club Secretary

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why do the NQ people get to play for free, when we had to pay when we went to Townsville last year!? UNFAIR.

wetnose said...

As Jmac has said before, and as everyone thinks, as soon as you put your name as Anonymous everyone hates you and thinks you are a douche for not being able to put your name to your thoughts.

Having spent the past couple of months playing with the Cairns players, I think the incentive of not having to pay league fees will get more of them down to Brisbane. None of these players are going to set any world on fire at this stage in their development, but exposing them to the higher levels of Firestorm & Slamtown will expose them to new ideas and lift their game quicker than anything they are going to see up here.

JdR said...

That's a very simple view of fairness, Anonymous.

Compare the six years of return flights Townsville players have been up for to play at Regionals 2005-2010, to your one flight for 2011. And look ahead to that happening again over the next several years. Northern Regionals might return to NQ in say 2017.

Consider that in Brisbane with 460+ players, you can play all the Ultimate you want, against varied opposition.

Consider also that its QUDA's role to promote Ultimate throughout the State. Spending a bit to entice players from NQ down to play a challenging and exciting tournament like the State Titles is a reasonably easy and good investment.

JMc said...

Anonymous commenters... deliberate trolls or just plain dumb? You be the judge...


I always find responding to anonymous rather interesting. Are they complete newbies to the game, who feel their name isn't known? Are they long-term Brisbane players who want to see discussion on a controversial viewpoint without it connecting to them personally? Are they my friends, team mates, organisers?

Either way, Wetnose has summarised it nicely.

Looking forward to seeing the subsidised NQ contingent at Regionals '12.

Jangles said...

Fine with helping NQ develop more they are starting to gain ground after years of struggling along.

That said I hope the cost of the tournament will be kept relatively cheap. Tournaments with out the frills can be just as good as those with the bangs and whistles.

Stu Austin said...

Cheese - given that anonymous said they went to regionals last year, I'm guessing it's one of your team mates!!