Compass Sport Cup & Trophy 2014

[Karen]

From the BO news page:
"23 members of the squad attended a training camp over the first weekend in February. The camp was based in Aldershot .....most athletes rounded the day off with night training in Long Valley."

Out of curiosity, does this mean they would be non-competitive for the CSC final, should their club be finalists?

[NeilC]

The area is split into two (North and South), the final is on the North part leaving the South free for Army/SN/Squad events.

[Karen]

Thanks for the rapid reply.
I couldn't find any details of an embargo, and I don't know the area at all, so nice to have an explanation

[alanbrett]

Some statistics related to the other threads.

21 of the trophy clubs had full teams
15 didn't have a full team of 13 scorers.

At the Yorkshire and North West rounds all 9 trophy teams had a full team of 13 scorers. South East and Scotland had the most incomplete teams.

One piece of feedback we had from some competitors was where 5 or 6 people picked up the map for the wrong course, eg Blue Cup instead of Blue Trophy. This unfortunately may have proved quite costly as they then did not score for the club.
In hindsight perhaps the start team could have been more pro-active or perhaps the labelling of the courses done differently.

It even probably cost our own club a scoring runner!

[Homer]

One piece of feedback we had from some competitors was where 5 or 6 people picked up the map for the wrong course, eg Blue Cup instead of Blue Trophy.

Did you need separate courses for Trophy and Cup?
The other heats seemed to manage with just one Blue Men course.

Agree though, that particularly in the first year of new class/course combinations, the labelling of map boxes needs to be very clear.

[Blonde bombshell]

Like Tatty I too wonder about the allocation of clubs to heats.

I understand that the DVO captain said that he didn't think he would be able to persuade his team to travel to an event more than 1 1/2 hours away (straight up a motorway) eg Pately Bridge. So they were allocated to the NW round.
As a result LOC were 'bumped' from NW to Pately Bridge which involved a 2+ hour cross country journey. I am struggling to see the 'fairness' of this.

On another tack the entry instructions to club captains for Pately Bridge were 'Pre entry via Fabian 4 only'. Yet the fabian4 site shows only entries from Aire & LOC. Surely this means that CLOK, EBOR & SYO didn't enter a team!
CLOK, EBOR & SYO were able to see entries from AIRE & LOC, but not vice versa.
Would this have affected team entries?
Is this right & fair?

[denbydale]

I understand that the DVO captain said that he didn't think he would be able to persuade his team to travel to an event more than 1 1/2 hours away (straight up a motorway) eg Pately Bridge. So they were allocated to the NW round.

Depending on one's location in Derbyshire - it's more likely it would be nearer to 2 hours

[sketchweppers]

Did you need separate courses for Trophy and Cup?
The other heats seemed to manage with just one Blue Men course.

Agree though, that particularly in the first year of new class/course combinations, the labelling of map boxes needs to be very clear.

We have been to previous CST events with 2 blue men courses, but actually I think it might be more necessary to split the green men course in future. At the SE heat there were 27 on blue cup men and 29 on blue trophy men; whilst there were 70 on green men.

[Blonde bombshell]

'Depending on one's location in Derbyshire - it's more likely it would be nearer to 2 hours'

Well, we can all split hairs. Those from the west of LOC would have a 2 1/2 hour drive. More to the point is the difference between an easy motorway drive and the hassle of a cross country one.

The question remains - why can a midlands club 'dictate' it's allocation and bump a NW club from the NW heat?

[MJG]

DVO gave the Kinver heat as their first choice and Irwell Valley as their second choice. The distances to those two depend very much whether you live at the Derby end or Buxton end of Derbyshire. Even if the East Anglian heat had been available the choice would have been the same. Both HOC and MDOC had chosen areas with limited parking which meant that Kinver could not accommodate all the clubs that had asked for it so DVO were given their second choice. Because of the limit on numbers at Irwell Valley at least one other club was then given their second choice. At least DVO and NOC did the decent thing and took coaches to Irwell Valley even though that added considerable travelling time for most members and could not get the coach the last 500m or so to the car park.

[Blonde bombshell]

So it appears that DVO had little choice with their options.

The question now becomes - how are areas chosen & agreed?
Does it make sense to use an area with a number limit?
Especially with no EAOA or EMOA heat on offer.

[Red Adder]

EAOA (SMOC) did offer a heat but with SE event being NE of London SOS & Havoc opted (reasonably) for Broxbourne, SuffOC were ambivalent and with I gather no EMOA clubs interested the difficult decision was made not to run an event which with possibly only NOR, WAOC and SMOC entering would struggle for numbers. It actually could be quite a blow to EAOA as the triennial CS event is one of its major sources of finance.

[SeanC]

Although I've been going on about the trophy clubs that didn't make a full team, there was also a big group of clubs that haven't entered the competition at all. Any thoughts as to why this is? Many of them are in Scotland. Does Scotland need two heats due to the travel times? The other clubs that didn't go are peripheral - Cumbria, North/Mid Wales, far south of England. Maybe travel time is the reason for these clubs as well?

So it turns out that only a minority of trophy clubs made a full team.
Full trophy teams: 21
Partial trophy teams: 15
Non attending trophy teams: 13

No Northern Ireland clubs either. Are they part of the competition?

Here's the full list of clubs that didn't go. Apologies if I've got any of these wrong. It includes 2 'cup' clubs, ESOC and WCOC.

SOFA
WIGHTO
ERYRI
MWOC
BARRO
WCOC - (cup)
BASOC
ESOC - (cup)
INT
INVOC
MOR
RR
SOLWAY
TINTO
WAROC

[mharky]

Have you considered that the issue for the Scottish clubs who didn't enter is the location of the final, not the heats?

[SeanC]

Yes I did think of this. Is this the case, and if so what could we do about it?