Compass Sport Cup / Trophy qualifying.

[awk]

Really enjoyable CSC/T at Gilling today, big thanks to organising team for all your efforts.

There were 2 Cup teams and 7 Trophy teams. Both Cup teams guaranteed to qualify as long as SYO win, under rule that if qualifier was in top 3 last year, the next club down goes through too. Fair enough, although Cup qualifying matches looked decidedly uncompetitive last year with so few clubs taking part, and this looks to continue that.

In the meantime one out of the 7 Trophy teams qualifies. No top 3 competing in this heat (again, fair enough) but apparently it takes 8 teams in a Trophy heat to generate a second finalist, but only 6 in a Cup heat. Why? The federation's genuinely small clubs are already being squeezed by larger clubs dipping under the over-large qualifying membership number, and are now being squeezed even more by this rule.

Needs a (well overdue) revision I reckon.

[Arnold]

That first outcome looks odder to me than the second one. I get the ‘Top 3’ logic but surely no team should be able to qualify merely by dint of showing up?

Meanwhile down south we had 1 of 5 Cup teams to qualify (SLOW over SN SO TVOC HH) and 2 of 8 Trophy (SAX and SOC over BKO MV and others) - assuming the live results are correct.

I do agree 1 of 7 in Trophy seems stingy though.

[pete.owens]

I guess the way forward is to reduce the club size threshold for the cup - with a proportional reduction in the number of runners to count.

[awk]

I guess the way forward is to reduce the club size threshold for the cup - with a proportional reduction in the number of runners to count.

I'd agree entirely. i think I worked out a couple of years ago that it needed to go down to 90 or 100 - can't remember which - to balance the two competitions more evenly.

I'm still mystifed why it's 1 from 6 in the Cup but only 1 from 8 in the Trophy. (BTW, we were 4th of the 7, so this is not a grunge about my club not qualifying!).

[King Penguin]

I believe similar thoughts have already been raised and I think such matters and possible changes are under consideration, but not in time to implement for this year.

[awk]

I believe similar thoughts have already been raised and I think such matters and possible changes are under consideration, but not in time to implement for this year.

Yes, these have been long-term issues, and hopefully there will finally be some movement on this: I know my club has raised them before. The disparity and the issues were just particularly marked and commented on yesterday.

[SJC]

Reducing the number of members required to be a large club makes sense.
However, once you start reducing the number of counters then people begin to ask whether it is worth going to the event.

[awk]

I don't think that's been suggested by anybody. It's the qualifying membership size that needs to be changed. It's currently 125. I did some research a couple of years ago (it's not a recent issue!) and found that a threshold of 90 or 100 (can't remember which) would give an even balance of Cup and Trophy teams across the country. There are a lot of clubs in that 100-125 range! And then the number of qualifying clubs from rounds needs looking at, and certainly needs to be consistent across Cup and Trophy.

[SJC]

Postby pete.owens » Sun Feb 18, 2024 7:58 pm
I guess the way forward is to reduce the club size threshold for the cup - with a proportional reduction in the number of runners to count.

[pete.owens]

I don't think that's been suggested by anybody.

It was suggested by me.
If you are going to reduce the size of clubs entering the cup, then you need to reduce the number of counting runners so that those smaller clubs can assemble full teams.

[rf_fozzy]

Another, longer term option, is of course, to look to grow the size of clubs by focussing on a more active campaign recruitment of new members - and most importantly not just juniors.

We put so much effort into juniors (many of whom from the articles in compasssport seem to drift away from the sport - this isn't limited to orienteering btw - happens in all sports), but almost nothing *as a sport in general* into other new members (yes, some clubs do, but there's very little sport-wide).

The fact that more "big" clubs are transitioning to "small" clubs should be clear evidence that a change in the way the sport looks at pulling in new members is required.

[SJC]

you need to reduce the number of counting runners so that those smaller clubs can assemble full teams

There shouldn't be any reason why a club with, say, 100 BOF members can't raise a team of 25 people. Quite a few of the smaller clubs are able to get out more runners than that.

[King Penguin]

Getting 25% of a club's total membership to a specific event which may involve considerable travel, when some will be passive/"sleeping"/family members and others will not be up to the length / trechnical difficulty of course they are required to run, can be a challenge. The even bigger challenge is getting those 25 suitably spread across the various courses to enable 25 to actually score in the final total. Most clubs have membership heavily skewed towards the upper age classes.
Even if you have the maximum 4 Super Vets + 4 Vets + 4 Green Men + 4 Green Women you still need to have 9 running as if M55 / W40 or less and al least 1 running as if M45 or less.

[King Penguin]

... and no retirals, injuries, mispunches......

[awk]

I don't think that's been suggested by anybody.

It was suggested by me.

Ah! Sorry to SJC - missed that!
In that case....

If you are going to reduce the size of clubs entering the cup, then you need to reduce the number of counting runners so that those smaller clubs can assemble full teams.

I don't think the numbers counting in the Trophy need to be reduced, but I can see why you suggest the Cup numbers may need reducing. That would be up for discussion.

In the meantime, I note that in at least 3 Cup matches* this weekend, all the clubs qualified for the final. Seems a bit farcical.

*Later edit: Make that 4 - just seen the East Anglian results.