South of England Urban League

[Jayne]

Following on from discussion about the Nopesport and Yorkshire Leagues, and subsequent proposal of the Scottish Urban League we have also been working to put together an Urban League for the South of England.

I would like to publicly say thank you to all the individuals in the clubs we have been in contact with for their overwhelming enthusiasm for the idea and to Caz Moon for all her hard work.

We currently have a list of 15 races, soon to be published on our website http://cityrace.org/seoul/

One question I would like opinion on is "how many races should count towards the final score".

I'll leave what I think the pros and cons are 'til I've heard from others.

Thanks in advance

[Tatty]

Thanks for putting this together. 5 races - or however many I can get to

[Happy]

Around half the events - so 7 or 8.

[mikey]

6

[Angry Haggis]

All of them - but your score is dropped by 5% for each race you go to.

Would be great to have The City and also Kingston in the series.

[Jayne]

Ollie, Kingston should be there. I too would like London - but the classes don't work with the Nopesport scoring, so unless someone can come up with a suitable fix for that I'm not sure it can be.

Previously, we've generally had just over half of the events counting in these types of competition but this means the league is only competitive if enough people go to (say) 8 events but we can recognise that this the quite a commitment and want the league to be competitive.

but, 3 of the events are on one weekend - so if there were only 6 (say) events counting would that add bias to people going to that weekend.

[Arnold]

I think fewer rather than more. 5-6?

If you look at UK Cup, Nopesport League and Masters Cup to a large extent the rankings are influenced by who actually managed to do the total number of scoring events - which was very few people in some classes.

I suppose for a SE league it will be easier to attend more of them as less travelling involved. But still..

[Paulo]

Great idea! - look forward to seeing the list of events. I would agree that about 5 or 6 out of 15 to count would be about right, to encourage a competitive league. Those who attend more events over the year will still have an advantage (more chance to get rid of poor runs from the overall score), but with any more than 6 you may find that not many runners achieve the full compliment. I don't think it matters that there are 3 events on one weekend - indeed this may encourage even more competition in the league if lots of people do all 3.

To make the acronym work better, should it be the South of England ORIENTEERING Urban League ?

[Jayne]

To make the acronym work better, should it be the South of England ORIENTEERING Urban League ?

Yes! I was writing the website late last night and missed out the word "Orienteering" ...

[IanD]

Too few events counting leads to the possibility that more than one person could achieve the maximum score - not a good idea surely? I think this is why (n/2)+1 scoring, where n is the total number of events, is commonly used.

The other factor to be considered is what other orienteering events the SEOUL events clash with - hopefully no clashes with Level A or Nopesport League events for example?

[HarryO]

I agree with Paulo - 5 or 6 events - any more and you risk large number of people wont bother. I dont do the Masters Cup for this reason - just cant get to enough events.

[Tatty]

If SLOW do a City of London at the Olympic Stadium will we have the SEOUL Olympics in London?

[Urban]

Probably 6 to count.
With regard to the question of the effect of the 3 event weekend.If my info is correct the 3 events on August Bank Holiday weekend are quite spread out unless you live in the triangle that they form, so even if you don't go to White Rose you are unlikely to go to all three urban races? So don't go for too bigger number of scoring events to get a bit of competition going.

[Happy]

When is the SEOUL list of events expected to be confirmed?

[Jayne]

The list is just about there - I haven't had chance to put it on the website. Have listed below for the mean time.

Saturday 21st April Huntingdon  WAOC
Saturday 26th May Poole Wessex OC
Sunday 27th May, Frenchay, near Bristol BOK
Sunday 24th June Canterbury     SAX
Saturday 30th June, Shaftesbury (TBC) Wimborne
Sunday 5th August Kingston-upon-Thames SLOW
Saturday 25th August Guildford  GO
Sunday 26th August Basingstoke  BADO
Monday 27th August Didcot       TVOC
Sunday 30th September Windsor & Eton    BKO
Saturday 20th October Oxford    OUOC
Saturday 3rd November, Southampton SOC
Saturday 24th November, Woking SN
Saturday 15th December Brighton SO

Probably 7 to count, but will confirm when we know if Shaftesbury is going ahead.

Jayne