The Draft league teams have been selected ready to kick off down at Annerly July 1st.
For those that might be interested here's a quick run down on the actual draft process, as reported by our man on the spot (or at least, hiding in the pub near aL, Nat, Coops and Special's table).
Calls were put out over the last few weeks through the BPL lists and via word of mouth spread to those looking to try playing at BPL level to register for "the draft". 4 teams with 3 weeks round robin plus a final.
Requests for people to act as captains were sent out and the following four obliging fellahs agreed to help out.(aL, Nat, Coops, Special).
The Four Caps sat down over a quiet pint and a pub meal at the Muddy Farmer last night and got down to business. They also selected the teams.
There was discussion about preselecting certain groups and running specific draft rounds for each of them in order to try and ensure relatively balanced teams. For example players with specific skillsets like established handlers and certain groups that had identified as being absent for specific games; or the juniors who'll all be missing from the final weeks games due to some prior engagement in Europe.
However it was decided that while specific absentees would be clearly indentified they would be included in the general draft. Thus leaving it at the discretion of each captain to ensure they didn't pick a team with four people who'd stated they'd be missing at the one time.
The Four Caps had a quick run through the list to try and get a little better information about some of the newer names to try and level the playing field.
First pick was decided with a series of coin flips. Then the selections ran down with a standard snake order:
1,2,3,4
4,3,2,1
1,2,3,4
4,3,2,1
etc etc
Our spy was not able to get the draft order in its entirety on account of his needing to get a refill from the bar, but for interests sake he got the the first 8 picks:
1. Dan Henbest
2. Stuart Austin
3. Leon McIntyre
4. Adam Beau
5. Finn McCarthy-Adams
6. Reece Stewart
7. Alex Livingstone
8. Stefan Rappazzo
Clearly, the Captains had been doing a bit of drinking, but I guess we'll see. Anyway, all in all a pretty interesting process for the four of us invovled. Hopefully it'll end up with an interesting comp over the next few weeks.
