Friday, March 21, 2008

Club loyalty

So at Regionals weekend, I was playing with Heads of State after failing to be selected for either Chilly squad. I only trained with HoS two or three times in the leadup, and as such never really felt part of the club. Sure, I am great mates with a lot of the players, but when I put on the jersey I didn't feel any semblance of pride that I know the other HoS boys get. I suppose the obvious answer is that I wasn't emotionally invested in the club at all - I'd never trained much or did many team things with them. I do wonder that if I had made a Chilly team and continued to train with them whether by now I'd feel part of the club, but there's no point dwelling on things that never happened.

It did get me thinking on the trip home about club loyalty in ultimate. It's especially prevalent in Open - hearing players talk fondly and passionately about their role in HoS or Chilly or Fakulti or Firestorm or Sublime. Every team at Nationals this year (with the exception of Taipans and New Zealand) is a continuation of a team from 2007 - some players have moved but by and large they all have a very similar playing group from 12 months ago. Women's is also seeing a similar trend - save for a new team (Minx) and a merger (Wollongong joining a second Factory Girls team) it's a very similar list to the 2007 Nationals entrants.

But what about Mixed?

Mixed clubs don't really seem to exist outside university. Take the list of teams from 2006 Mixed Nationals...
  1. Reekin' Havoc (Newcastle)
  2. Bootius Maximus (Brisbane)
  3. Sublime (Perth)
  4. Usual Suspects (Canberra)
  5. Blokes & Shiellahs (Canberra)
  6. Honey Badgers (Melbourne)
  7. Crikey! (Brisbane)
  8. FURY (Adelaide)
  9. MUCUS Regurg (Melbourne)
  10. City Slickers (Melbourne)
  11. = The Restless Flycatchers (Adelaide)
  12. = Jagged Little Disc (Sydney)
  13. Southern Thunder (Ballarat)
  14. Zing (Hobart)
  15. Eureka Goldigaz (Ballarat)
  16. sCAPEgoats (Sydney)
  17. MUF Crabs (Melbourne)
  18. Disc Heads (Adelaide)
  19. Mixed Nuts (Adelaide)
  20. Gumby Magic (Sydney)
...and then the list from 2007 Mixed Nationals...
  1. Bootius Maximus (Brisbane)
  2. Spiderpig (Sydney)
  3. FAF (Sydney)
  4. Station 59 (Melbourne)
  5. Padlock (Sydney)
  6. Pie Wagon (Newcastle)
  7. Fat Beagle On A Rampage (Canberra)
  8. Toot Sweet (Sydney)
  9. Verfrumdung (Canberra)
  10. HECS Debt (Adelaide)
  11. MUCUS (Melbourne)
  12. 7 Nation Army (Sydney)
  13. Honey Badgers (Melbourne)
  14. Cosa Nostra (Sydney)
  15. LOG! (Hobart)
  16. Wollongong (Wollongong)
  17. Gary (Melbourne)
  18. Ambivilance (Canberra)
  19. Umber Ella (Adelaide)
  20. sCAPEgoats (Sydney)
  21. Super Happy Lounge Lizards (Brisbane)
  22. Special Sauce (Sydney)
  23. woMANLY (Sydney)
  24. Ocean Madness (Newcastle)
When looking at name only, 4 teams carried over from one year to the next. To be fair, a few 2007 teams shared a similar core player base to 2006...
  • Reekin Havoc -> Pie Wagon
  • Jagged Little Disc -> 7 Nation Army
  • Zing -> LOG!
  • Disc Heads -> Umber Ella
...and a lot of the same players attended both tournaments but switched teams. So why aren't mixed clubs greeted with the same loyalty that open/women's clubs are? Why don't we see more teams carry over year to year at Mixed Nats?

To be fair (gee I like that phrase a lot), it's only been in the last couple of years that we've seen this happen in Open and Women's, and I think that can be attributed in part to the path to Nationals being more difficult than in the past - ie: regional qualifying. This has forced teams to maintain consistency year-to-year in order to get and keep their spot at Nationals.

Last year we saw a qualifying process put in place for Mixed Nationals, and teams missed out. Only one or two, but still, those teams are going to realise there is more work to be done to get a spot. So hopefully there'll be a natural progression towards continuity in mixed clubs. Hell, maybe even A/B teams and X/Y teams.

But instead of waiting for a natural progression, I have a better idea: club registrations.

When playing just about any other form of organised, competitive sport, you have to register with a club, who are registered with the governing association. I played basketball as a youngster, and registered with Saints Basketball Club, who then put me in a team in the Saturday morning under 10s competition. If I wanted to go and play for another team, I would have to get a transfer approved in between seasons. Same when I started playing football and registered with the Ballarat Swans. It was simple - I filled out a form and, just like that, I was a player for the Swans.

So here's the idea - we have a deadline for clubs to register with the AFDA. Say December 1st for Open/Women and June 1st for Mixed. No fees or excessive paperwork, just an online form saying the club name, where they are based, and who the contact is. We could even use the existing online rego system. Then six weeks later the clubs then submit a list of registered players - those who have said "yes, I want to play with Club X this season". From there, teams then select their Regionals/Nationals squads.

So what's the advantage of this?

It puts the onus on clubs to recruit and develop new players.

Look at what happened in Victoria this past summer - plenty of new players were getting up to a standard where they were ready to step into Open clubs. They had two choices for clubs in Victoria - Chilly and Heads of State. Who did they all want to play for? Heads of State. HoS players were the ones that were at the junior open days and Junior Nats. Because the young players saw these older players all the time, they naturally wanted to play alongside them. So in the end, HoS got all of the young players bar two, who went to Chilly. Conversely, many Albert Park Social League "graduates" joined Chilly, because it was Chilly players doing the coaching there.

If a club is required to register their players at the start of the season, they are going to have to go out into the frisbee community and find those players before anyone else does! Barefoot would hate to see Fakulti go and sign up all the talented young guys playing, so Barefoot players would need to get out there and scout for themselves. Rather than waiting for players to come to them, clubs would need to go out and make their club seem more attractive than the others.

Clubs would need to outdo each other - so we would see things such as development squads, club based teams in local leagues, open tryouts...and things I'd probably never think of.

1 comment:

Owen said...

If the aim is to encourage continuity and recruitment, here's a further idea: only registered teams that have played, say, 2 tournaments prior, can enter Mixed Nats.

This means those going to Mixed Nats have to commit to it, by playing with their team beforehand.

This is essentially what Regionals do for Open/Womens Nats: require teams to play and prepare beforehand.

Having regular teams also creates rivalries and rematches and other good stuff. Mixed Nats can feel like a Hat: "Who are we playing next? Who are they? I've no idea if we'll beat them or not..."