Putting the *bad* in badminton…
Happy New Year.
I’ve updated the club calendar with all of the remaining fixtures through to the end of the season. Note that the matches in cup weeks aren’t all known at this stage, obviously.
If there are any errors or omissions be sure to let me know, Rebecca.
Here they are, the teams for the initial matches which start next week. These are subject to change throughout the season. Any problems, see a selector, don’t write to me…
Cynthia has been circulating a fixtures list, but if you haven’t got one yet or have misplaced it (Paul), then look at the league handbook. I haven’t done so yet, but I will be adding all of the fixtures to the club diary soon, too…
‘A’ Team
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‘B’ Team
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‘C’ Team
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‘D’ Team
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I’ve finally managed to post the fixtures through til the last match of 2008 to the club calendar.
Find it here or look in the sidebar somewhere (the agenda view is pretty good) ====>
Don’t forget you can subscribe to it through Google Calendar, too; use the button at the foot of the sidebar.
Badminton re-commences this year on 31st August for the first of 2 consecutive Sunday afternoon team selection sessions at Salt Ayre from 2.30pm until 4.30pm. The Monday selection and club nights start on the first of September from 7-10.
Note that the Sunday sessions are free to members, but are to be used for team selection.
That’s gonna hurt…
Matches start W/C 22nd September, so we’ve 3 weeks of Monday nights to prepare before club nights revert to 1 court 8-10. I’ve put the initial dates in the club calendar (see also this entry and the google calendar button in the side-bar) and I’ll add details of the matches once I get sight of the new handbook.
The fee structure is unchanged from last year, and can be seen in full on the welcome page.
I have now added all of the known fixtures for the season to the club calendar. The link is also available permanently in the side-bar. Note that there are a number of available views; the default is monthly, but try the others, too – I find the agenda view very useful for viewing these matches.
The calendar is provided by Google, so you can easily subscribe to the information or add it to your own GCal, if you wish. You can do this very easily by clicking on the ‘Google Calendar’ button available at the foot of the side-bar, or by clicking here.
BBC SPORT | Other Sport… | Badminton | Badminton on the BBC
World Badminton Championships
Saturday 18 August
Sunday 19 August
A quick heads up on some important dates for September:
This gives us 3 whole club nights for selection and practice before the matches start again. We have also booked 2 afternoon sessions on the 9th and 16th September, purely for selection and match practice. These will take place at Salt Ayre, where we have 2 courts for 2 hours between 2.30 & 4.30.
This season, club night will be restricted to 1 court 8-10 on Monday nights at the college when matches are on.
All dates and events will be updated to the club calendar as they become known.
Hot off the presses, the final standings have just been published here.
No great surprises, and, as far as our teams go, no promotions or demotions. Here are our teams and final positions.
Well done everybody!
So, we’re going to be asked to vote on using the new point per rally scoring system at the league AGM this year. From the League website:
THE RALLY POINTS SCORING SYSTEM
The new Rally Points Scoring System, adopted by Badminton England some 12 months ago is now used in all events run by Badminton England, this includes County Tournaments, County Matches and Junior Events. From next season the Inter-town League will play to this format.
The time has now come for our League to make the decision whether to ‘go with the flow’ so to speak and adopt the system for play from next season.
A demonstration of the new format will be held at the new Sports Hall at RIPLEY SCHOOL, Ashton Road, Lancaster, on Thursday, 5th April, 2007, commencing at 7.30pm. This will show how the new scoring system works, together with serving positions on court. A notification has been sent to all Club Secretaries about the evening, but all of you please come along and see for yourself.
The matter will be an Agenda item at the A.G.M. in June, where it will be discussed and voted upon.
Details of the new scoring system can be found on the Badminton England web-site – badmintonengland.co.uk and go the Events page, right hand column.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to take a format which was specifically developed so that international-standard play would be more palatable to a TV audience and then try to apply it to local league standard players (a sixty-second interval at 11 points? What, really?). Keeping track of the position of players looks difficult (an assumption backed up by the number of professional player and umpire errors in evidence at the recent international in Preston) and I’d be concerned that the system will just make people more tentative and defensive, and could lead to slow, drawn out games. Also, any system where you can lose a match by serving into the net is going to suck at our level, frankly.
Take a look at the rules. Download the simplified rules below, copied from the Badminton England website.
What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment.
For those of you that may be interested, there are results, details of the draw and near-live match scores for the All England available at http://www.horizonsolutions.tv/live/badminton/07engopen/. It’s pretty slow at the moment, but then they’re probably getting like 20m hits an hour, or something.
Earlier, in the mixed doubles…
1/4 Final M 2
Nathan ROBERTSON & Gail EMMS 1 – 2 ( 17-21, 21-18, 21-23 ) ZHENG Bo & GAO Ling CHN
Just find out this evening that the ‘A’ team home match against Sunnyside ‘B’ next week has been re-arranged for the following Monday (19th February), This also has the effect of changing the club night next week. There will now be a club night on Monday evening (12th Feb) 8pm – 10pm.
Hope to see you there.
For information, the ‘A’ team lost their cup match this last week to Ripley ‘A’ by 30 points. The handicap was 68 points in Ripley’s favour. The excitement as we opened the envelope at the end of the night was almost too much to stand.
Last chance to come in on the semi-official club group booking to see England/Germany at the Preston Guild Hall on 22nd of this month. That’s a fortnight this Thursday.
It’s semi-official because there’s not many of us going at the moment, and I’m putting the word around quite informally. This is partly because nobody seemed really bothered about the last one, which is fair enough.
Play starts at 6.45, so it’s an even bigger rush than getting to a home match…
Tickets are a tenner, and we’ll have to sort out some sort of car sharing. There are 4 of us in the the ‘official’ party at the moment, so that’s nice and easy.
I’ll be booking in the next day or so – I’ll probably ask around club night tomorrow (Monday 5th) and then book on Tuesday, if they haven’t already sold out, that is.
James.
Since, through some weird arrangement of the cup draws, neither the ‘A’ nor the ‘B’ team were ever going to have a match during the next cup week (W/C 22/01/2006), we’ve decided that we should have a friendly match instead of cancelling the hall. So, there you go, Torrisholme ‘A’ versus Torrisholme ‘B’, Monday, 22nd January. Usual time and place. Possibly go for a beer afterwards…
The ‘A’, ‘C’ & ‘D’ teams all won their cup matches last week, and I’m still awaiting the results of the ‘B’ team match. So, next cup week we have the ‘A’ vs ‘B’ on Monday evening, and, if my calculations are correct, the ‘C’ away on Monday night at Ingleton ‘C’ (have fun) with the ‘D’ team away on the Wednesday to Storey’s ‘C’ (St. Martins College).
News just in: The ‘B’ team lost their game. They were some 50 points up in normal scoring at the end, but Storeys ‘B’ had a +90 boost from the handicap committee.
What did you all think of the envelope system for the handicaps, by the way? I think it’s rubbish!There isn’t the interest or excitement of trying to work out how you’re doing against handicap as you’re going along, no room for tactics and the familiar (but meaningless) ‘we just need 10 per game’ stuff! It might as well be just another league game (and it’s easy to forget that it isn’t). We had a cup game last year where we knew going into the very last game that we needed just 8 points (or whatever) for a win. Now that was exciting, watching as we edged closer and closer… We got 6, so lost, but it was exciting at least. This year holds no prospect of such enjoyment.
From the League Website:
INTERNATIONAL BADMINTON COMES TO LANCASHIRE
On Thursday, 22nd February 2007, Lancashire will once again host an International Match, ENGLAND -V- GERMANY. The Venue will be The Guild Hall at Preston, commencing at 6.45pm, and will be recorded by the BBC for transmission on Grandstand the following week-end.
Germany are rapidly becoming one of the stronger squads in Europe and when the two countries last met it was a very close match. It will be a full international match with 5 events, mens and ladies singles, mens and ladies doubles and mixed doubles. Gail Emms and Nathan Robertson will be playing, together with the new Danish Open winners, Donna Kellog and Anthony Clark. England have probably one of the best squads for many years, come and see them in action.
The last two matches at The Guild Hall have been sell outs so avoid disappointment the Ticket Sales Hotline is 01908 268400 (Badminton England, Milton Keynes)
More information will follow, so to avoid disappointment get ringing!
Anyone fancy it? The last international was quite entertaining, and you may even get on telly, like what I did. I’ll put it in the calendar, anyway.
For information, the Yonex All England Championships 2007 take place between 7th & 11th March 2007.
See here for official information.
Not certain whether we’ll organise an ‘official’ club trip, there’s never been any interest in such a thing in the past, so I don’t imagine that’ll be any different this year.
A few of us did go down a couple of years ago, and had a thoroughly weird time…
Things have naturally been a little quiet on the site over the past few months, since this is a badminton club website and no club badminton has been going on, but there’s a new season just around the corner, a committee meeting next week and we’ve had the AGM, so here’s some stuff to get things going again:
I’ve updated the club diary with the dates of the first club nights of season, but because I’m far too nice, here they are for your convenience:
All at Lancaster & Morecambe College, natch. Please note that these are really team selection and practice evenings, and they will be busy. Club nights proper will start at Salt Ayre on Thursday 28th September and should happen every week. Since we now have 4 teams it is unlikely there will be any Monday club nights once matches commence (w/c 25th September), but you never know, as my 2 year old is fond of reminding me.
I’ll update the events diary with all the club matches as and when I get the fixtures list.
There’s a committee meeting next Thursday (17/08), so I’ll update the site with any news, announcements or royal commands from the chairman in the few days following. Look out in particular for a statement from the selectors, and maybe something from the social committee, who knows? One tidbit I did pick up (or possibly dreamt) is that the ‘C’ team ended up with promotion from the 5th after all, because of Salt Ayre dropping out of the league, but I’ll confirm this at the committee meeting. If this is true, we’ll have teams in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th this season, unless we can’t scrape together a ‘D’ team after all, in which case we’ll be fined and have teams in the 2nd, 3rd and 5th divisions.
But that’ll never happen.
The closing date for entries to the league tournament is this Friday, 10th February.
BADMINTON England » The Carlton England v Denmark International
The Carlton England v Denmark InternationalOn Thursday 2nd March 2006, the Preston Guild Hall in Lancashire will be hosting The Carlton England v Denmark International match. Play will begin at 6.45pm.The match will be played on one night only and will consist of Men’s and Women’s Singles, Men’s and Women’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles.
Anyone fancy this?
Robertson and Emms blow five match points
Olympic silver medallists Nathan Robertson and Gail Emms squandered FIVE match points as they lost their Yonex All England title to Olympic gold medallists Zhang Jun and Gao Ling 12-15 17-14 15-1 at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham this afternoon.The England pair had beaten their Chinese rivals on all three occasions since the Olympics but Robertson summed it up when he said: “We threw it away. When you have five match points you ought to win. We didn’t play to the level of the last two days.
Wow, that’s eerie – I squandered 5 game points in our match last Friday!
Here’s that Team Selection Notice in full. This should be winging its way to you right now on paper, if you haven’t already received it.
One thing I forgot to mention in the document which went out with the minutes of the AGM (i.e. the stuff below) was the teams we have – this might have been useful considering one of the questions we ask you.
A new season is nearly upon us once more, and the selection committee are keen that it should start on a firmer footing, selection wise, than recent seasons. A meeting was held in the selection committee’s corporate boardroom (main bar, The Dog And Partridge, Bare) and an action plan drawn up. Allow me to remind you of the first in the list of selector’s duties, as mandated by the club at the AGM:
The season starts W/C 26th September. We have arranged the following dates for selection and pre-season team practice:
On each of these dates we have 4 courts available. Of these, 2 courts will be set aside for exclusive use by the committee for selection purposes and team practice. Selector’s will be at liberty to organise, extend, cut-short, re-play and cancel games on these courts as they see fit. Co-operation of all players presenting themselves for selection is required (on any court), and co-operation of all others would be greatly appreciated.
A further request this season: We intend to operate an OPT-IN policy as regards team selection – we will only select you for a team if you explicitly tell us you wish to be selected. In the past, the assumption has been that all members are available for selection, and this has caused problems. If you do not tell us you wish to be considered for selection, you will not be selected! This does not affect your right to change your mind later – selection will be on going – but do try and help us out here…
Grievances: We believe that the selection process should allow for feedback from all areas, including the individual team members. If you have a problem with any aspect of the selection, whether it be that the team you’ve been selected for is too-high/too-low, or you don’t feel comfortable with your partner, or you’d prefer to play more mixed/doubles, whatever, come and talk to us. We can’t promise to change our decision, our primary concern is the success of the teams, but we can take any concerns into consideration. We can’t even do that if we don’t know about them.
This season, your selectors are James Illingworth, Pam Clemmet and Brian Forrest.
If you wish to be selected, you must respond with the following information before the first date shown above:
Email: selection (::at::) torrisholme-badminton.co.uk
Text: 07770 664909
Phone: 01524 831140
Mail: James Illingworth. 5 Hardlands Avenue, MORECAMBE. LA4 6NT.
Or contact any of the selection committee, or the club secretary, Cynthia Dickinson.
Or, for you web users, leave your details in the comments for this post!
Remember:
1. We are operating an opt-in policy. If you do not respond you will not be selected.
2. If you do not attend selection evenings, you will not be selected.
3. Having said that, selection is not set in stone at the start of the season.
4. Matches start week commencing 26th September (courts booked 7pm – 10pm, 4 courts after 8pm).
5. Club nights will be Thursday nights, 8.30pm – 10.30pm, at Salt Ayre, from 29th September.
6. We are operating an opt-in policy. If you do not respond you will not be selected.
7. www.torrisholme-badminton.co.uk
