SJC wrote: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.
100 is pretty much the size of my club and we did manage to get 36 runners yesterday. As others have said the challenge is to match the demographic requirements. My club was rewarded by having some juniors. I'm in two minds about this. On one hand it seems a little strange for some juniors to get big points scores (sometimes 100 points) just for completing. On the other hand getting a batch of juniors to the point of finishing Orange and Green courses independently has involved many contributions from throughout the club as well as a lot of hard work from the juniors themselves.
One thing that would improve the competition IMHO would be to allow competitors to run down a course as well as up. This would make it less of a demographic challenge and would help clubs with a more youthful distribution fill their teams. It would also help newer competitors perhaps not experienced or fit enough to complete their age courses be involved in the competition... hopefully boosting turnout in future years. It would particularly benefit M/W20/21s/35s who we are short of, who currently have just a really long course on offer. M18s for example jump straight from Green to Brown when they reach M20! I would also suggest removing one of the brown or short brown courses. Combining these two changes would give a non elite or less experienced M21 for example a blue course option which is a lot more accessible than brown.
Of course captains would be able to push some of their faster runners down into the shorter courses. This would make team selection and strategy more important and the results less predictable - but make it easier overall to match the demographic requirements. All this would be good IMHO. The losing classes would be the Veterans Short Green who could have youthful M60 and W45 turning up with no option to run down themselves, so some restrictions on this practice might be needed for the shortest courses.
I don't know if any decision makers for CompassSport Cup read Nopesport anymore, but I hope this helps if any are.