London Ultimate

frisbeetart

It's cold and rainy, the clocks haven't gone forward, and Winter League is barely over. How can we possibly be thinking about Summer League?

Well we are, and we'd like to get your thoughts of what we can do to improve on last year. Any comments and suggestions you have are welcome here. We're not promising we'll put them into practice, but we can promise that we'll read them.

So if you didn't like the crossover format, you thought spirit levels had dropped, you thought we played too early, the pitches weren't good enough, the venues were inaccessible, the website didn't get updated often enough or the weather needed to be improved or indeed you have any ideas or suggestions that you'd like to air then here's the place.

Oh, and feel free to say if there were things you liked too Smile

rzla · Joined: 31 May 2006 Posts: 10

Well, seeing as you mentioned the crossover format...

I've always felt that it went a bit against the spirit of the summer league. The point of the crossover format is to eliminate as many mismatches as possible, which is does fairly well. But in my experience is doesn't matter in Summer League if you have the odd mismatch, as long as it evens out in the end. I remember in my first summer league season we started off in a pool with two much better teams but really relished the experience of playing some top players in our first ever games. Then we ended up in the second division and had our close games there.

The disadvantages in the crossover format, in my opinion, are that

a) your progress in the tournamnt is restricted from the outset - it's always nice going in to a competition knowing that you start off equal to everyone else at least

b) it puts too much emphasis on the first two games of the season before you know your team very well

c) we seemed to spend a lot of the time playing the same old teams we know and, er, love / hate

It's almost as though the season starts off seriously and competitively, and almost seems to peter out as you go through the summer (unless you're in the top couple in your respective league).

I'm not just dissing the current structure though, how about this...

Assuming we have 24 teams...

3 equal pools of 8 teams:
Pool A: 1,6,7,12,13,18,19,24
Pool B: 2,5,8,11,14,17,20,23
Pool C: 3,4,9,10,15,16,21,22

Play round robin within these pools (7 games), then split into 3 peer pools of 8 teams. For teams finishing 3rd or 6th in the pool promotion or relegation will go down to points difference.

Then - play 3 knockout games (!) to determine final placings. Have the 3 main finals on a saturday finals day if possible.

So that's 10 games - maybe the top and bottom teams will get 3 total mismatches in the first divison of 8, but shouldn't we all take it a bit less seriously, do a bit of coaching in these games and get the buckets of cocktail out! And the teams in the middle will get less huge mismatches, but there'll be a few *interesting* games that should / shouldn't be won by a certain team, until their star player has to work late - hehehe

OK this structure may have been devised somewhat to reduce the large number of potential Galah / Herd match ups as well Smile

Anyway what do you think?

frisbeetart · Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 1:38 pm Post subject:

First a big thanks Tom for actually taking the time to make a suggestion. Looks like no one else could be bothered... or else Summer League is pretty much perfect...

My tuppence worth:

actionthom · Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 111 Location: morden

i thought summer league was ace!
my suggestion would be that my band/s play at the end of summer league party
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jm_cooper · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 11:24 am Post subject:

not sure whether it's possible but it would be good to start earlier in the year.
by the end of summer league it's normally getting dark too early to have proper games.
June 21st is longest day!
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Gonzo

waftycranker · Joined: 14 May 2006 Posts: 12

Hi,

PAF enjoyed summer league, but we did have some issues with teams telling us on the day that they wouldn't be able to get a full team out, saying that they'd have a team but of limited numbers, or just plain not showing up at all.
One of those teams then went on to win spirit - until it was then vetoed by Dan as he agreed that forfeiting a game wasn't really very spirited at all.

Anyway, I'd like there to be more commitment to actually showing up, and some kind of punishment (ie -10 spirit points) for wasting another teams time and effort to show up.
Obviously telling the opposition a week in advance that a game needs to be rearranged is reasonable, telling them on the day less so, so there needs to be some scale and common sense applied.

/rant

I'd also like more games in a longer season.

Cheers,
Nick

Views my own, etc.

frisbeetart · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:30 pm Post subject:

Agree entirely with the request for more games and we'll definitely be aiming for that. Watch this space!

As for forfeiting, I think you've covered it pretty well - it's bad spirited and should be avoided at all costs. Having said that I don't want to be too draconian and I realise that sometimes people do have sudden problems getting players out. My suggestion would be a combination of

I wouldn't say -10 for spirit though. Surely it's just as bad to come along and actually be really bad spirited in every category... I'd rather turn up and not have an opposition than have one that cheated, played dangerously, verbally abused me etc.

Ken

(My thoughts unless I've indicated otherwise.)

wendyball · Joined: 17 Mar 2009 Posts: 1

I have a suggestion.

Last year the team we were supposed to play pulled out at the last minute although we were surprised to find out that they won spirit!
this was mainly due to our spirit score not counting (I think we gave them 1 or 2 for the number of players that did bother to turn up). surely anyone that does this should not then be allowed to win the spirit prize.
Just my thoughts...

Wendy

frisbeetart · Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:27 am Post subject:

Thanks Wendy. You're not the only one who's raised this and we're working on what to do about it. Our initial reaction was to make teams that don't turn up have a hugely negative score which would effectively make it impossible to win spirit. However, that would mean a team that was well spirited but no-showed for a game would lose out to a team that cheated, fouled, abused and generally ruined Summer League.

Is that right? Personally I don't think so.

My preference would be to have a clearer system for allocating points. Something like:
0 for a no notice no show
3 for a <24hr notice no show
7 for a >24hr no show where they didn't manage to rearrange the game.

not quite sure about the points score and obviously we'd need to just make these just guidelines as there are always special reasons for not turning up (good and bad - someone who keeps you informed in the lead up to the game that they're short of players is better spirited IMO than a team that phone you exactly 24 hours in advance and cancel without warning or reason).

frisbeetart · Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 9:22 pm Post subject:

I had a few people email me about the idea of setting up a Hat League. We're not doing it this year, but it is something we talked about at length. If it's something you have an opinion about (either for or against) then I'd encourage you to say so. If lots of people were to think it was a good idea then maybe next year we'd put it into action...

Ken

PS Big thanks to all of you who've taken time to put finger to keyboard. We're trying our best to satisfy all of London's wishes while also making sure we don't put in jeopardy all the hard work that's been done to get London Summer League where it is now.

Ham · Joined: 28 Aug 2006 Posts: 3

Hi
Great job in getting SL underway earlier, i think thats a great idea.

I was just curious about the £320 fee. What does this cover? To be honest i dont mind paying it and i think its quite reasonable to pay a few quid towards organised events (like lsl).

If we are becoming more like other sports in terms of organised leagues (which i am all for), i think its important to have a little bit of transparency with cost outlines.

ta
Ham

frisbeetart · Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 10:31 pm Post subject:

Hi Ham,

I don't know the answer to this to be honest. Si Hill's the guy who does the finances, so I'll foward on your request and hopefully he can give some more info.

Obviously the big cost is booking the pitches (and getting them lined). With six pitches a night, two nights a week for fourteen weeks, it quickly adds up. I believe the prices have mainly been increased this year in proportion to the extra weeks we're booking, although there will almost certain be a small increase due to the councils upping their prices. I'm pretty sure there's no extra uplift.

As for whether it's right to have more transparency, I'm caught in two minds. Part of me thinks that it would be great to have it all out in the open, but another part of me thinks that it just makes it more likely that people will complain. I have images of people asking for a reduction because they're playing at the cheaper venue, or complaining because LSL spent too much/little money on the party.

What I can say is this - I don't personally make any money out of Summer League and if I thought there was any suggestion that people were taking advantage of London Ultimate to make a quick buck I wouldn't be involved. No amount of money that could be made from Summer League would make up for the hassle of sorting out pitches with the council, let alone the rest of the organisation.

Ken

paulhurt · Site Admin Joined: 01 Jan 1970 Posts: 113