A few points
- the format was changed substantially since the Home Internationals, where all finishers in the MTT gained points. Here it was the top 50% only. As has been pointed out elsewhere, even if you reduced the MTT weight by 50% again, the top three positions would have been unchanged
- At the end of the Day the Wales team have had 3 out of 4 reach a 52 man MTT final table. The team leading until the MTT phase Germany did not have a single player hit the top 26. It could well be that this is an outlier result, but still it took enormous skill for Wales to get that result, and they were rewarded accordingly. Similarly for the French and the Portugese, 2 hit the final table
- I personally like the MTT part of the competition a lot, feels it adds a great deal to the event which after all should be a test across all disciplines, particularly as the final event. It contributed to the atmosphere last night. As it was the 2nd and 3rd places went right down to the Heads Up stage too.
- I do not feel that such outstanding MTT performances negate the results of the SNG and HU rounds at all. It is merely a fact that wins and losses across teams reduces score variance in the early rounds and a team on form can harness positive score variance in their favour in a MTT. Skill, tactics and strategy can enhance that as we saw, and didn"t see in some cases, last night
- As ever though, in time for the next team event we"ll be considering further. Always open to different approaches and suggestions such as George Bedi"s are interesting.