WCOAP TEAM EVENT

[fandango]

Just wanted an unbiased discussion about the International team event, if this is removed by mods I understand.

Last season as you may/may not know I was lucky to be involved in the winning team England squad at WCOAP, I also have been fortunate to win a national title aswell, but hand on heart winning team gold has been my greatest thrill to date.
So when announcements where made for this years WCOAP the team Steve contacted all four of us Asa, Stu, Tony and myself and explained the situation that he would not captain this years team if we all could not go back as defending champs.
So as a team who had formed a great bond we all agreed that when a new skip was announced we would not apply for the squad.

We where told that the reason for teams being cut from 5-4 was that countries are finding it difficult to find 5 players to play for them..

Well over the success of ECOAP all 10 countries I has he pleasure to play against where excited and ready for WCOAP, the French, Swiss, Cz, Slovaks, Belgium etc all said that they wanted to play and would have no problem finding 1 other player, Germany and Italy had awesome numbers there and many of the supporters who travelled with them also played the ME.

So are the teams struggling to find 5 players just the international teams?? Canada, USA, Malaysia? Or am I wrong is Scotland, Wales and Ireland also struggling?

Are we thinking of the minority rather than the majority?.. Obviously I"m thinking with a biased head as it effects me and the other members of the team more than anyone else, but I know if it was a strong group of friends like say Scotland or Ireland where in the same boat I would sympathise 100% with them in the same situation.
Surely if teams where given 3 months to find 1 extra player this would be acceptable.?

Discuss...

Edit.. Could this prehaps get moved from this board to another?  Prehaps live or general discussion?

[AMRN]

I know Des had feedback from some teams that sourcing 5 players was too much of a stretch, and that 4 was more achievable. I can"t really comment on that feedback, however would suggest that if any country is having difficulty, then there isn"t too much difference between 4 and 5.

With respect to the home countries and Euro countries, I firmly believe, and have stated elsewhere, that our multiplicity of team events has caused a level of saturation meaning that the prestigious nature of the events is lost, and the attraction for people to play is not so strong. If we could return to a point where these international team events carry a certain level of prestige, I suspect it would be less of an issue to get a team together.

On a personal note, when I heard that the teams would be reduced from 5 to 4, I realised my options would be to either pick a new and different team; to pick the same team but to drop a player; or pick the same team and be a non playing captain. None of these are viable options for me.  I discussed with the other members of our winning team, and we agreed that if we couldn"t defend as a complete team, then we wouldn"t defend at all.

If the event does end up being 4 per team, I will be gutted, but will understand. I"m hoping that the event of last year is replicated with 5 per team.

[TheSnapper]

Nice post Carl, really captures that special vibe of winning an International gold.

Having been in your shoes once I fully understand the nostalgic appeal of defending with the same line up. We were unable to field the same team thus denied the privilege and tbh that"s exactly what it is, a privilege.

I would fully understand the very same Team defending the title for England but it has to be acknowledged, there are many many top players that haven"t had the good fortune to taste that experience. Should these players be a consideration?

[Paulie_D]

I have been proud to be selected an APAT team event as part of an England team on a couple of occasions so, perhaps, I am not entirely unbiased but here"s my 2 cents.

Firstly, I completely understand Steve"s desire that the winning squad would wish to defend their title but, by the same token, and I absolutely mean no disrespect, it was an England Team that won...so England were the defending champs NOT necessarily the same individuals that made up that team.

Of course, the squad that made up the winning team want to defend BUT the overriding factor (IMO) should be picking the right/best squad to defend England"s title whether that constitutes the same squad or not.



If teams ARE having issues getting a squad of 5 perhaps an option could be implemented that you can have a squad of 5 but only 4 can play at a time. Haven"t we done that before at team events?

Does this give a 5-man team an advantage?...Perhaps...but, then again, extra support should, arguably, be rewarded.



As for the number of team events..APAT has 3 "country based" team events at most..does it not?

• Home Internationals


• ECOAP


• WCOAP

At each stage/level the "range/area" is expanded from just the UK (and Ireland)...to the whole of Europe and then the World.

I kind of like that....if we had to drop a team event, I would rather it was the forum event but I understand the reasons why that event still exists.

As always, my opinions are my own, regardless of whether you agree....or not.

[AMRN]

The any four at a time from a team of five was used for ECOAP 2012, and in my humble opinion it turned out to be a bad approach. Some teams had 4 players, which meant that all of their players were always involved, whilst the home nations had to have 5 players (4 + the highest online league player), which meant they always had someone sat out, including during the final MTT round.

[AAroddersAA]

This is a difficult one. It does seem a shame that the England team are not able to defend their championship. We do have to look at the bigger picture though. The player pool and situation England have is far from being the norm.

Realistically the team event clashes with the best event of the year and by asking people to play in this event you are asking them to skip the majority of WCOAP. This makes it hard for small player pools to get enough players. Taking Wales as an example, I am not sure what is happening with the Welsh team for WCOAP or if there will even be one but a lot of the players in Wales, who have played in the past, feel they have now been there and done that and would rather focus on the individual events. When you have a small player pool this is always going to happen. Also the cost of the team event is equal to two side events, that"s without the cost of the shirts. This makes it harder to get the players on board also.

The other issue that it brings up is that trying to put a team together you really don"t want to be picking players to effectively "make the numbers up". You want all teams to be as competitive as possible. If I am captain of Wales for example for the WCOAP I would absolutely not pick myself whatever. I am not very good at the formats of these events and if I picked myself even to just make up the numbers it would effectively be asking the other players I pick to pay the considerable cost of a team event and miss other high quality events whilst at a disadvantage against the other teams. Based on this you have to try and select a fully competitive team without weak links and again this is harder from a small player pool. A number of players have mentioned to me they would rather not play due to the event being -EV.

Based on all of the above I would suggest overall a 4 person team is better than a 5 person team.

[CW86]

Probably the wrong thread for this, so i apologise if i take away from the discussion here, but here is an idea that was suggested to Des a while back and wonder what you guys would think.

A good point is made that to participate in the the team event a player is unable to participate in the individual events at the worlds, which to me is a massive shame. The solution we suggested was that groups of people would join and pay a team fee or registration - which would then go towards a team prizepool. (if players wanted to participate in a team, but didnt have enough people they could also be put into a pool where teams could be drawn etc)

A team could consist of 5 to as many players as was wanted. The team would then submit 4 names prior to each side event who they wished to represent them, with the finishing places in the side events scored appropriately.

This would allow full participation in the individual events, but would still create a strong team bond and continue to foster the great Apat spirit.

Thoughts???

[fandango]

I would fully understand the very same Team defending the title for England but it has to be acknowledged, there are many many top players that haven"t had the good fortune to taste that experience. Should these players be a consideration?

Yes Brendan I agree 100% about considering giving new players a taste of the experience, when I captained the forum team last season I made sure the team had players who had never had the opportunity to play before, as I did in the recent home internationals, it was my goal that to help new players get a foot on the first rung of the ladder hopefully I achieved this when Dan, And Joe was picked, likewise Liam, Dave and Brian in the forum team..I"m obv speaking from the heart in this thread and my views are going to be biased.

Also Steve it was discussed recently at ECOAP about the Welsh situation, and shooting from the hip here it saddens me to think some guys are for going the "financial" factor of playing individual events rather than the pride of representing their homeland, but each to their own I guess.

[LombBomb]

I think that countries should have the option of choosing a squad of 5 but only 4 playing in any one round.  This eliminates the problem of countries only having 4 players as they"d all play each round anyway.  Having a squad of 5 also creates a dynamic where the captain has a tactical decision to make as to who to leave out for each particular round.

[fandango]

This is a difficult one. It does seem a shame that the England team are not able to defend their championship. We do have to look at the bigger picture though. The player pool and situation England have is far from being the norm.

I have to disagree to some point here... Look at the strength of numbers the welsh have for example, I could easily name at least 10 players who would grace any international team, and I"m in no doubt that at least 5 or 6 will be at WCOAP.. It seems as have been said that they would rather play individual events because of the money situation..

Scotland, obv are in the same boat and have many very talented individuals who could represent their homeland..

Yes England are always going to have the most players to choose from, but I guess that shouldn"t really effect the outcome at the end of the day it"s only 5 to choose just makes the skippers job harder.

I"m just speaking from feedback gained at ECOAP from the other 7 countries , Cz, Germany, Belgium, Slovakia, Italy, France and the Swiss..

[Mikeyboy9361]

FWIW and risking offending or upsetting last years victorious England Team, I would be very disappointed if other English players were not given the opportunity to represent England in this years event. Some of you have been lucky enough to play these events on many occasions, and others only once, but there are many capable players out there that never seem to get a look in, and to go with the "We won it last year so we"re playing again this year" is wrong IMO.

[Paulie_D]

FWIW and risking offending or upsetting last years victorious England Team, I would be very disappointed if other English players were not given the opportunity to represent England in this years event. Some of you have been lucky enough to play these events on many occasions, and others only once, but there are many capable players out there that never seem to get a look in, and to go with the "We won it last year so we"re playing again this year" is wrong IMO.

That, I think, is another subject from the question being posed.

Team selection is the Captain"s decision.

Team size....is APAT's

[AAroddersAA]

This is a difficult one. It does seem a shame that the England team are not able to defend their championship. We do have to look at the bigger picture though. The player pool and situation England have is far from being the norm.

I have to disagree to some point here... Look at the strength of numbers the welsh have for example, I could easily name at least 10 players who would grace any international team, and I"m in no doubt that at least 5 or 6 will be at WCOAP.. It seems as have been said that they would rather play individual events because of the money situation..

OK, I can understand this (to a certain extent). However looking at it from a lot of peoples point of view, they need to be away from home and book valuable holiday from work for extra time to play the international event. This also comes with the additional expense of having to book extra nights in hotels and being away from partners and children for times like August Bank Holiday and Easter.

For an England player who has been selected for England as a one off and it is a really big deal (being selected to play for England in WCOAP means a lot and anybody selected should feel rightly proud) I can imagine the players are more than happy to do this and partners being happy to look after children ect so they can do it.

Doing the same a couple of times each year to play for Wales is a bit of a different ask and let"s be honest it is not the same as being picked for England (it hurts to say that but being selected for Wales is just not as hard as being selected for England). There are players who have played events for Wales almost every season since the beginning of APAT (doing all of the above each time) and I can understand why they may wish to do their own thing for a couple of seasons. If this is the situation in Wales I can only think it is even harder for the international teams.

At the end of the day I am still confident Wales will put a competitive team out there in April. Possibly even our best team but I would have no issue with any of those guys saying they did not want to play due to the above reasons. I am guessing if Paul is available to take over the team in April his thoughts would be along the same lines, although I would not want to speak for him.

With this in mind 4 players is a better number than 5. I have said for a long time that there should be an England A and B team due to the sheer size of the player pool, too many deserving players miss out because of this.

The squad of 5 players with 4 playing each round makes sense to me also.

FWIW and risking offending or upsetting last years victorious England Team, I would be very disappointed if other English players were not given the opportunity to represent England in this years event. Some of you have been lucky enough to play these events on many occasions, and others only once, but there are many capable players out there that never seem to get a look in, and to go with the "We won it last year so we"re playing again this year" is wrong IMO.

I think it should absolutely be the same team. They were a GREAT team who 100% deserved to win the event. The event would be better if they were in it again defending their title. They just have everything that a team needs, if they do play again and everybody plays to their absolute best and the cards break even. Well I can only think of one group of players who can beat them.

[Paulie_D]

I think it should absolutely be the same team. They were a GREAT team who 100% deserved to win the event. The event would be better if they were in it again defending their title. They just have everything that a team needs, if they do play again and everybody plays to their absolute best and the cards break even. Well I can only think of one group of players who can beat them.

Completely disagree...no matter how much the squad wants to repeat.

If the format of the event changed...say new sub-events were introduced/substituted (Razz, Stud, Shove-happeny) why would the same squad be needed? The skillset has changed...so should the squad.

Even if the format were exactly the same, why exclude new players...I can"t think of any international team game where this is the case from one year to the next.

I get the desire for champions to repeat but England won a country based event....if a more "qualified" (based on whatever criteria are used) squad exists...that new squad should get the nod.

[Fatcatstu]

FWIW and risking offending or upsetting last years victorious England Team, I would be very disappointed if other English players were not given the opportunity to represent England in this years event. Some of you have been lucky enough to play these events on many occasions, and others only once, but there are many capable players out there that never seem to get a look in, and to go with the "We won it last year so we"re playing again this year" is wrong IMO.

As one of last year"s team, I like Carl, am obv biased.

When I was told that it was going to be 4 members to a team, and what that meant to us, I was totally gutted.

Nearly every other team who has won it has had the opportunity to defend it, we can"t do to the number in the team now, but even if it were five to a team why should we be punished for being English?

If we hadn"t won it, I very much doubt I would have applied to play for England again, as I have been privallaged to do it 4 times, getting a gold, sol we and bronze medal whilst doing so. The pride that I have felt each time has been immense, but I would have not applied to let other people have a go. Hardly the typical selfish England international :p

If other team have agreed that they could get another player, then why not go for it? There is loads of time to sort it out if we start now!!! I just really hope it is considered.

Forgive spelling mistakes, I"m on my phone!!