Moral Dilema for your Thursday Afternoon

[Ant Jones]

Interlopers have two women's relay teams for the Scottish Champs this weekend. SYO did not enter any relays in time and the organisers are not allowing any late entries.

The way the current UKRL points are for the women SYO 50 (2 runs) and INT 40 (2 runs) means that: If SYO run they win the UK Relay League, If SYO don't run (and the INT team finish) then INT will win the Relay League - there are insufficeint teams entered for placings to make any difference.

Interlopers have been approached by SYO as we may not fill our second relay team and asked whether we will give them our space.

So, do Interlopers give SYO a run and let them win the UKRL
or not and ensure Interlopers win the UKRL ?

Moral guidance is being saught..............!

[Becks]

He he....very glad not to be you.

[pyrat]

they have been trying to scrounge CLYDE's womens open team also. We've said NO NO NO NO.

[brooner]

they must have known that they'd have to get a result at the scottish so they should have got their entry in if it meant so much...

[distracted]

I'm assuming they knew they had to enter a team to win the UKRL, and they didn't by the closing date, so it's their own fault. Seeing its happening this weekend, I would say the organisers are totally justified in saying no to late entries. and I don't see why other teams/people should give up their run(s) to accommodate for someone else's bad planning. So it's a big NO - and you can ensure the INT second team is full anyway, if this means running non-comp (with someone else who wants a run filling a gap) then so be it

[Toni]

if there are so few votes for Yes - can SYO not even be bothered to vote?

[Mike]

Perhaps SYO are too busy working, or training.

Unfortunately there was a communication problem within SYO. I agree that the organisers have every right to refuse a late entry at this stage. On the other hand, if there is a spare relay team going, then it seems silly for it to go to waste.

[mharky]

i voted yes

[Dave H]

Personally my viewpoint is that the entry date is the entry date and if can't read the calendar then tough (and I say that as a member of SYO). However, as someone who has spent much time over the last few years doing everything I could to fit late entrants into start lists, particularly for the JK, on the back of the argument that we should seek to maximise the level of competition. I would ask the general question can a sport where the entry for one of our major relays consists of just 15 mens teams and 5 womens teams (according to the details I have) afford to be so picky?

[eddie]

in my opnion for the good of the sport and to keep the value of the competition high SYO should be allowed a late entry.

so there

[Becks]

Acting as Devil's advocate - it's not an extra space - it's taking a space already booked by another club. And it's not really increasing competition - it's guaranteeing them a win when they haven't got their entry in in the first place whereas INT have.

Still..I have no idea what I'd do.

[housewife]

The organiser has not given me a late entry for the individual, despite only 6 women entered, so I don't think the fact that just 4 clubs have entered the womens relay will make much of a difference. As for Int giving the second team to SYO women, no comment, but I'm not sure who would want to travel up to Pitlochry just to run a relay.

[Wattok]

Give them the extra space on the condition that they join Int so Int are guarenteed to win no matter what happens, Whey hey!

[Richard Baxter]

Me again

Just to clear up a few points here:

- There was a miscommunication within SYO which is entirely our fault. This led to no women's open team being entered. We didn't miss the closing date per se - as you can see there are plenty of SYO teams entered. It was only spotted on Tuesday that we didn't have a team. I'm sure everyone can have a laugh about that.

- On Wednesday we contacted the coordinator to try to get a team. We were refused. We offered several different ways of overcoming the objections which were based around extra work, logistics, lack of maps etc. In my mind all of these could be overcome fairly with minimal impact on the organising team. However we were flatly refused. The coordinator did suggest that we try contacting Clyde (who we don't know personally) so we did. I think we made it very clear to them that we were only calling on the offchance that they didn't have a full team or that they may be perfectly happy to swap with our medium open team. To my knowledge they haven't got back to us but I think it was fairly clear they were happy to run the open.

- We also called interlopers - I won't publically go through the list of people spoken to - who initially seemed to think there might not be a problem if the second team wasn't full. Given the positive response we followed this through eventually getting hold of Anthony at his work. We did neglect to tell him the position about the UK relay league, which had been made clear to other club members, and we have explained why in a separate email to him directly, in which we have apologised for putting him and Interlopers in this position. I have only just seen this post on nopesport.

- It may be of interest to note that worthier causes than the evil empire of SYO have suffered due to the lack of availability of late entries but I'm not going to go into this publically.

Very simply I cannot speak for other team members but we are totally fed up with this, and won't be going to the Scottish Champs. If we venture into Scotland at all this weekend it will be to see friends, ironically also 'affiliated' to Interlopers.

I would like to say publically what has been said privately to Anthony which is that we wish Interlopers (and Clyde's) women's team all the best for the weekend.

[Guest]

Surely, Even if INT were to allow SYO ther runs avalable in there second team, the entry is still a INT entry. Therefor, if INT do gove SYO the runs, no matter who wins, it will still mean that INT win, with SYO people doing all the running? in which case, INT can only win?

Did i miss something?