Mens Open - no longer big?

[SeanC]

My club is probably typical in that we have an aging membership. 4 experienced M40's have turned M45 in the past 2 years, making it impossible to fill our 3 mens open places in the Compass Sport Cup without someone running up. Looking at the numbers pre-entered on brown at Ranmore, the M20-M40 numbers seem similar to the numbers on the men's green, and much smaller than men's blue.

Is it time for men's open to be a "small" Compass Sport Cup course? Discuss.

[AndyC]

Been the case for us for a while (and W21)

[andypat]

If you are going to do that, how about letting us old M40's run blue

[Paulo]

My club have by far our largest entry on the Brown course this weekend - 20 out of 64 runners in total. Brown is definitely very much still a large course as far as we're concerned!

[SeanC]

For the sake of the discussion, numbers on brown at Ranmore, excluding those running up.

Big clubs
SAX 1
HH 5
SN 8
SO 4
TVOC 1
SLOW 20


Small clubs
DFOK 2
CHIG 6
GO 0
HAVOC 0
LOK 1
MV 1
SOS 6

I guess the competition between SLOW/HH and SO is normally quite close and interesting so can't be too bad a formula. Should be a good day out.

[NeilC]

excluding those running up.

Why do that? It's an open class not an M21-M40 class, many 18/45/50/55+ runners are still highly competitive on a Brown giving club captains flexibility to try and maximise their scoring potential. I'm hoping for two of my runners to be in the top 6 at Ranmore - neither of them being M21-M40.

[SeanC]

Just to be clear, I only excluded them from the statistics and personally don't have an opinion either way.

[graeme]

The open class allows people would not otherwise score for their club team to do so. Isn't taking part the point of this competition?
because if it was really about finding who were the fastest, you'd only have an open class like every other? serious sport.

[Mrs H]

Well as I understood it - the point of the competition was to demonstrate strength in depth across the club.

[madmike]

I guess the competition between SLOW/HH and SO is normally quite close and interesting so can't be too bad a formula. Should be a good day out.

Au contraire Blackadder

SO normally win by a mile! They are bigger and, indeed better, than the rest of us (and well done to them).

Competition last year very close for 2nd between SN, SLOW and HH was, as I recall, the closest for a few years.

[SeanC]

SO normally win by a mile! They are bigger and, indeed better, than the rest of us (and well done to them).

Come on Mike... positive thinking!

2008 result:

SO 2399
HH 2379
SAX 1876

[madmike]

Sean,
shush - I am trying to get them to be overconfident

[SeanC]

Excellent, some mind games. All we need now is a bit of pre-event sledging and we can be considered a serious team sport.

[sketchweppers]

Very small clubs struggle to even get 13 runners (regardless of course) in total to turn up to the Compass Sport Trophy events - especially when they are outside the region. I have just noticed that one small club attending our round this weekend had 42 runners at last year's final. We just haven't got a chance against a club that big.
Our average number of runners at events within our region last year was 19. This year's qualifying round is over 100 miles away - no wonder we have only got 10 runners. In fact that is probably a good turn out for us!

I guess many of our orienteers just think that it is not worth travelling all that way because we haven't a chance of getting through to the final - and if everyone thinks that way - no we won't have a chance because we won't get enough runners. How can we entice more orienteers to bother attending this main inter club competition?

Is is fair that we have to compete with clubs over 3 times our size?

[SeanC]

That describes my club too, though as the event is not too far we have a full team assuming people all finish. Although we never make it to the final, it's still a good day out and with the updated results it's great for club spirit, even if we are just aiming for 3rd or 2nd.

I wonder for small clubs a pre-qualifying round might not be a bad idea competing against just one club, so long as the draw didn't bring up the same opponents every year (ie the big small club)? Possibly not such a good idea for the large clubs as there are less of them? Wasn't it like that in the past. One of our older members talks fondly about the time when the club hired a coach to play a club 100 miles away on their home forests and won.

I'll be a bit provocative here, but a lot of competition rules seem to work against the development of small clubs. Perhaps because these rules were devised in an era when small clubs weren't as small as now, or when the demographics were different? If the sport is to grow, small clubs need to grow unless we are to have a round of mergers and club closures.