The Franchise Model for major events

[mharky]

Face facts..... sit down and reduce the loading on clubs and regions, and give them space to work on the base of our membership pyramid, to bring in new people and introduce them to TD1-3 competition. In ten years we can return to our fanciful list of championships for everything.

Get rid of the regional championships, no ones cares. But NEVER get rid of the JK, as you seem to be implying.

[DavidJ]

Face facts..... sit down and reduce the loading on clubs and regions, and give them space to work on the base of our membership pyramid, to bring in new people and introduce them to TD1-3 competition. In ten years we can return to our fanciful list of championships for everything.

Get rid of the regional championships, no ones cares. But NEVER get rid of the JK, as you seem to be implying.

Surely I am not alone in actually liking the regional championships? I may be wrong but I wonder if actually the overload is at the layer below that. Here in the SE/SC/SW many clubs have an annual large event ('badge') and this can lead to fixture congestion particularly in the Winter/Spring.

The regions each have a league with good quality events so why not cut out the larger stand alone events and make the CompassSport Cup and the Regional Championships the opportunity to compete at a bigger event. In fact using this model, each region (SW/SC/SE) could have one high quality large event rather than a regional 'Southern Champs' and each club in the region attempting to stage their own big event. The status of the regionals would increase and winning them would be seen as a significant achievement. This would leave the clubs to concentrate on building the base locally.

The major events would be seen as the opportunity to compete with others at the highest level across the UK.

[mharky]

I should have added; "if you're going to get rid of something, get rid of the regionals instead of the JK"

[andypat]

If I pile in now and start plugging the "Easter 4-day in Scotland 2018" with world class terrain, sprint, two classics and relay, and lob a few carrots in the direction of WMOA, I can kill JK2018 before it even gets going, and nobody would take a franchise to compete. Unless BOF think they own Easter.

Steady Graeme - have you recovered from your RTC nervous breakdown yet?

[greywolf]

How to simplify major fixtures:
1) keep the JK, but brand the sprint and relay as Britsh champs. Make the relay planner's job easier by reducing it to 3 courses: 3*6k-ish for M, W & old men, 3*3-4k for old W, even older M and under 16s, and something TD2/3 for the youngsters. Each course has a single mass start and non-competitive teams should be encouraged.
2) British middle and long champs on a single weekend, wth middle on saturday as 30 min race and long on sunday, when championship courses would be planned as proper long i.e. 90 minute winning time for all senior classes, with shorter coursees for juniors and some colour coded options for those who want a leisurely bimble
3) Scrap the regionals

[SeanC]

It is obvious to me that we are watching the sport in its death throes!

Face facts..... sit down and reduce the loading on clubs and regions, and give them space to work on the base of our membership

Good passionate stuff RJ.

However I don't think culling all the big events is the answer on it's own. It's not such a simple relationship. Down in TVOC, the latest local event has 124 IND's listed. No that's not a misprint. That doesn't include people running in groups, or those on the string course, so total number of newcomer/newish orienteers = approximately 200.

But TVOC are still managing to organise the British Middle distance championships this year.

Maybe there are club committees who see organising big events as the priority, and getting lots of newcomers + an expanding club as a nice to have, rather than the other way round. But more likely it's that the sport in general is great at organising complex big events, but hasn't learned how to market the sport, and develop new orienteers, particularly those under 45. Definitely time to study what's happening down in TVOC and at other successful clubs.

Just to repeat - 200 newcomers at a bog standard local event in a park.

[graeme]

Steady Graeme - have you recovered from your RTC nervous breakdown yet?

Yeah, but I'd better see how the family recover from two days as helpers at the NWOA JK

Every able bodied volunteer still isn't enough.

So it seems

[Sunlit Forres]

Some food for thought: and certainly has it's attractions.

My main concern is that if every year the events were put out to competitive tender by BOF,
I believe there is a risk that the playing field would be consistently tilted to the regions/areas that are capable of attracting the largest turnouts for these events, and the events might not be circulated round the regions to the same extent.

We're all off to Wembley.

But more seriously:

How to simplify major fixtures:

Like. Very much like.

[frog]

I want bonus controls with archery challenges!

[Rosine]

I'll settle for "find the roaming Santa"

[frog]

On a more serious note I do think we have too many big competitions and agree with whoever said we need to spend more time trying to put on more local events and get more young recruits and just have fun socialising at our events and not getting stressed out by them. Our Black Spout event today was small with just 50 entrants but the terrain was good it was a lovely day and we had lots of small family groups trying out the sport as well as a few elites tearing round the blue course. A couple of groups enjoyed their yellow course so much they then went round the orange.
We have felt quite stressed out by larger events recently so apart from Schiehallion are taking things easy for a couple of years.
As 2012 JK relay organiser I felt the relay had way too many courses, especially as the adhoc course was the most popular.
We need to simplify our big events and only hold the ones people care about.
And have some bonus archery controls, I saw several deer in the forest today...

[Big Jon]

I'll settle for "find the roaming Santa"

How about carrying inflated balloons with you - or 30cm lengths of uncooked spaghetti - with time penalties if/when balloon is burst and spaghetti breaks into shorter lengths......

[frog]

The spaghetti penalty was at a Tay Christmas event years ago, I think that was the event with some of Ian stoke's Home made pea pod wine in a flask at one of the controls!

[Big Jon]

Thats it - BOC with beer controls (or lager for the soft southerners )...... Could get a serious change in order at the top of the results.
Think of the training opportunities......

[Mrs H]

Joking apart - is there any evidence that any club or association would be willing to take the events on under these conditions?

I've always thought that the JK/BOCs were something of a poisoned chalice. What do you get? Your best areas embargoed, your best people exhausted and all for nothing more than financial return. Most clubs are reasonably well off so do they need the money and now are they prepared to take the risk?

Is the incentive purely financial? As others have said, wouldn't clubs be better off investing the huge time and effort involved in ensuring their own future?

BOF are attempting to asset-strip. It must be quite unusual for an organisation to do it to themselves. Perhaps there's a reason for that.