Just a question if I may.
What does everybody think of the stipulation that the top placed national player is automatically selected for the WCOAP team and also that the top 3 teas get places in the National team championship?
The first one is OK I suppose although I would prefer it was not there personally. Why do we have to mess about with the Team Championship though. It is one of APAT's best events and is never under-subscribed I don"t believe? Won"t this mean that other team potentially miss out.
Obviously, at the end of the day, the league is great overall but I don"t see what these two conditions add to it and believe they take something away from the actual events themselves.
The only negative I heard regarding the top individual players getting a squad place in their national team was the fact that this was a stipulation only in place for the Home Nations. Does that put them at a disadvantage, I don"t know. The guys that got to play for their country will probably think not, and they were all new faces to an APAT team event, who all held their own and picked up points for their country. International squads were extended to either 4 or 5 players, and again, the only downside I heard of was the fact that not everyone got to play the final MTT event. Something I am looking at for the WCOAP in March.
As for the top three teams getting an invite to play the UK Team Championship, yes, that event is likely to be oversubscribed, as it is every year. We"ve had two APAT teams entered in the past few events, this will likely be just one forum team this year. Luton is a great venue, as we"ll be able to hit a 200 capacity (25 teams of
, so I hadn"t really considered an issue with these three invites taking up other teams spaces. After all, these three teams would hopefully be rammed with regular APAT players.
I think that this is a great incentive for teams playing in the Online League this time around, and a great way for a bunch of them to meet up in a live event, having played online together for a few months.