CompassSport Cup/Trophy

[SeanC]

That's great.

Some ideas for club captains to think about.

You could change the rules so allow more oldies to score and retain the option for juniors or 20-40's to score. The incentive could still be there as there are more oldies so the scoring could be lower. Could there be a clever statto out their to figure one out?

I think the key thing is that clubs should reasonably be able to field a full team IMHO, if they don't it discourages club members from taking the competition seriously. The competition is good for club development... it gets people talking to each other and interested in each others runs, makes us feel like a club rather than a group of random individuals. I think there are some small clubs that are just too small to help though.

It may be that separate rules for qualifier and finals would help? Or 3 rounds for some areas (Scotland... long way to travel for many)?

[graeme]

Perfectly normal for most clubs not to have a team, what with all the classes and complications in the scoring system. If you actually wanted full teams, you would let everyone's points actually count.
But it wouldn't be proper a orienteering event without a bit of age discrimination

[AndyC]

Slaley scores (after much checking) are now on http://www.newcastleorienteering.org.uk/

[RJ]

......If you actually wanted full teams, you would let everyone's points actually count.....

Wouldn't work..... some clubs would just field their strongest x runners regardless of 'age spread' who would then dominate the competition. At least with the rules as they are we get teams with a considerable spread of ages and gender, with those clubs that have full teams having a well balanced membership. It may very well be that the clubs that can't field a full team are actually just short of light green runners (for eg).

For the competition to be healthier we just need clubs to increase their membership.... but then that is true of the sport as a whole. Greater membership is a good idea all round!!

[SeanC]

It's the old "punish clubs for not having juniors or young adults" argument. That will teach them for blackballing everyone under 50.

I like Graeme's idea though. I agree though you do need some way of making competition's unpredictable. One of the strengths of the CSC. You should still win the competition for good orienteering rather than matching someones vision of an ideal demographic. We can make league tables and awards for that if we want and we don't even have to go orienteering.

[graeme]

Wouldn't work..... some clubs would just field their strongest x runners regardless of 'age spread' who would then dominate the competition.

You mean like they do in pretty much every other National Club Championship in pretty much every other sport?

Far more inclusive to say that the club's 5th and 6th best runners in a particular age group can't score at all and the club can't field a team You reckon that distaining novices and irregular competitors is the way to increase club spirit and membership

if the primary purpose is to provide ego trips for M65s then the sport is truly doomed

[awk]

You mean like they do in pretty much every other National Club Championship in pretty much every other sport?

Except it was never intended to be, and has never been, a National Club Championship. It was meant to be, and remains, a competition designed to include all ages in a club competition. There are some rough edges, not least because it's trying to cater for so many age classes, and certain classes will always struggle to compete at the front end (like my current one), but that will change for individuals as they move through the structure. It strikes me that the spread is overall fairly reasonable (I'm sure there could be the odd tweak), and does include a wide range of our membership.

The issue I have with the structure is that the incentives for those outside the small minority who have a genuine chance of reaching the final is limited. I've long wished to see a structure where the competition is divided into divisions based on strength (and geography) rather than on a set of specious membership numbers, with the incentive of promotion/relegation plus qualifying for divisional national finals.

[graeme]

The Compass Sport Cup is the British Clubs Orienteering Championships started by CompassSport Founder Ned Paul in 1982.

[awk]

The Compass Sport Cup is the British Clubs Orienteering Championships started by CompassSport Founder Ned Paul in 1982.

That wasn't how Ned and I discussed it when he was considering setting it up (at the World Champs in Switzerland, in 1981, nor how we discussed it afterwards. If we had, it wouldn't have ever seen the light of day as a knock-out cup. I personally think the website is wrong.

[Paulo]

I agree that a simple change of just abolishing the maximum number of scorers per club on each class would go a long way towards resolving a number of the issues which have been raised, in particular the inability of some clubs to raise a full team of 25 despite having far more than 25 runners available, simply because of their own demographic.

This isn’t purely an issue about some clubs being over-reliant on veterans – the winner of the South East round would have been different if this rule change had been made, as SLOW’s top 25 scorers actually scored more points overall than SO’s – but SLOW have far more runners in the Mens/Womens open category who didn’t count and not enough veterans, whereas SO's runners were spread more evenly across the age classes (being particularly strong on juniors and vets).

As others have said, the more successful clubs in this competition are those with a demographic which most closely matches the framework of the competition. A simple change to eliminate the cap per class would at least go some way towards making the competition a bit more competitive between different clubs.

Even with a change like this, the rules will still favour clubs with lots of juniors and vets – looking at the numbers of runners in the various results you can see that it is relatively easier to score points on these classes than on the bigger Blue/Brown classes purely due to the differences in numbers competing (despite the different scoring system in the respective classes). So I don’t buy the argument that clubs with lots of runners in any particular age will suddenly dominate the competition, and suspect that the clubs who do well at the moment would generally tend to carry on doing so – but it might at least mean that more clubs are able to be competitive in the competition and field full teams, which I would have thought is in the spirit of the competition of trying to be as all-inclusive (across age classes and different clubs) as possible.

[andypat]

I'm not so sure I'd change anything, but Paulo's argument about removing the caps does make a lot of sense. Mind you I was the only member of my club whose score didnt count for anything on Sunday and I dont feel that disenfranchised!

[AndyC]

The one thing I'd change is M20 running on Blue, I mistook the age of one of our M18's and had him on that course and thought "there's no way he can handle that" and I think he's fairly typical for his age and will be on that course ready or not next year-green might make more sense and the better ones could run up to blue perhaps.
The other thing I noted was at the very bottom of the age range where children who normally do yellow ran on orange and got lost because that was above their capability at their age - can't be good for their long term development-.

[NeilC]

This isn’t purely an issue about some clubs being over-reliant on veterans – the winner of the South East round would have been different if this rule change had been made, as SLOW’s top 25 scorers actually scored more points overall than SO’s

Be careful what you wish for. If you allow the top 25 scorers to count BUT then in the interests of fairness allow the scores on all courses to go 100-99-98 etc then SO win again (by 45 points).

[graeme]

Why would it be "fair" for last place on one course to score more than a top-half finish on another?

AndyC: The top M20s are far quicker than the assorted old folk on blue courses. And it's much shorter than is typical for "M20L". But your point is completely valid, and goes some way towards explaining why only designated elite children stay with the sport.

[mister blobs]

I'm not convinced that any change would help. Arguably the "large", "small" and "very small" classes should be changed to reflect the changing demographics of the sport as a whole. But any change is likely to favour some clubs over others. We are competing in a competition with a set of rules, does that make the winning club the best club in the country? Probably not it makes the winning club the best club at competing with the other clubs that turned up on the day of the final and within a rather arbitrary scoring system. Looking at some of the heats, there are some events where there were very few runners on particular courses (especially the junior courses) but there were other events where there were plenty of runners on these courses and some very good runs scored relatively few points. It is up to club captains to know what clubs they are up against and understand the demographics of their club against those they are competing against and so enter competitors for the best course (is an M18 likely to score more points by running Blue Men or Light Green?).
The rules aren't perfect but they are suitable for the job - we get an inter-club competition.

The one thing I'd change is M20 running on Blue,

I wouldn't change this. Don't forget that M16A is equivalent of a blue course so the better juniors are capable of running blue from at least M16 onwards and don't have to do so for 4 years. By the time they get to M20 the best ones will be easily capable of beating most M45+ in the club. If you have new juniors who can't cope with TD5 courses then the CSC is not the competition for them. The YBT does offer an alternative for less experienced juniors (up to M/W18) so encourage them to take part in that.