Possible Draft System

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?

Crazy Idea for Today: Mixed Plate (or Mixed Salad Bowl?)

I've just been spending some time on my own wandering the vast marble-clad space of the war room that's in the AFDA wing of stately BUB manor, and had a bit of a crazy idea that I'd like to share.

Mixed Nats is really popular and a great tournament and more and more people want to go, but its also a lot of work and maybe its getting harder from year to year for people to run it. So at the moment its capped at 24 teams, and we're moving to having to have teams qualify and all that. But its a bit of a bugger if you miss out, particularly if you're from an area where there isn't a mass of higher-end Ultimate going on.

So I wonder if one day we'll split the event into two. AMUC continues on but gets shrunk a bit (down to maybe 20 or even 16 teams). Teams still have to qualify for it and its about elite play.

But maybe the weekend before AMUC, there's the AMUP - the Australian Mixed Ultimate Plate (or Mixed Salad Bowl maybe), which is initially open to any team that doesn't qualify for AMUC. The Plate would be a tournament that is bidded for and rotated around the country to be in a region where the AMUC isn't (so if AMUC is in Brisbane this year, AMUP might be in Ballarat).

I think AMUP might still be a good quality tournament for people who are looking for that but miss out on the elite end. AMUP would also make the zone qualifiers less of an end of the season for those teams that don't qualify for AMUC. And AMUP organisers and players would nonetheless aim to have a better run tournament, a more awesome party, etc etc than AMUC itself! ;)

And having both tournaments being smaller may make them more appealing for people to want to host them?

Anyway, just today's crazy idea to put out there. Put it on the to do list for someone sometime in the future.