Torrisholme BC

I took part in this survey. I got a bit carried away with some of the free-text answers, well, a couple of them anyway. Here’s what I put. Note that these are my personal opinions and not the opinions of Torrisholme Badminton Club, and, on reflection my comments about the organisation leeching from local clubs is a bit harsh, since I do want to see national and international players being supported and that has to be funded somehow, but I just wish it wasn’t all one-way traffic.

For the ‘Why do you say that?” question in follow up to my answer of ‘very poor’ to “Thinking generally about the current benefits of being a BADMINTON England member – how would you rate them? ” question:

A national organisation with literally NO relevance to local players. Despite lip service in the magazine, the organisation leeches from local clubs and gives nothing in return, bar forcing undesired changes on locals just because they suit national and international players or TV producers (e.g. rally points).

When I chose ‘very poor’ for “Thinking generally about the Badminton Magazine – how would you rate it?”, they asked me why I said that. I replied:

No content worth reading for practically anybody. Very limited coaching advice or information about playing badminton at the level of what must be the vast majority of the readership, local league players. Even for higher standard players there can’t be anything worth reading beyond the results and national rankings.

Seriously, who wants to read endless puff pieces about what some national player does on their typical day?

Where are the reviews of equipment? Where are the discussions about tactics that league players and up-and-coming juniors can use at club night? How about some drills that can be put into use by people at several removes from the elite? Or advice on how to organise a club night around 2 courts with 20 people wanting to variously practice, play games and talk about East-enders, before sodding off down the pub? These people don’t need or want advanced aerobic and anaerobic conditioning regimes, they need some basic advice about where to stand to receive serve, how to practice backhands and what to do when the opposition are making bad line calls. OK, lots of people do want more advanced stuff, so leave it in (though I bet if they’re serious they’re getting it elsewhere anyway), but where’s the stuff for the little people?

It really isn’t clear who the audience of this magazine really is.

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.

rally_points_info_sheet.pdf

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.

I’ve only just had word of this, and don’t know many details, but it appears that the third annual LM&D Badminton League golf competition will be held this Monday (4th September 2006) at Heysham Golf Club. As far as I know, you need to just turn up at Heysham GC at 5pm. Don’t know about the cost, can’t remember what it was last year. Don’t know if there are any restrictions either, like handicap or something. I told you I didn’t know many details.

I don’t know how long this has been ‘organised’ for, but the timing is absolute garbage as far as I’m concerned – 5 O’Clock on a Monday afternoon, and the first Monday in September?! Our first club night is on Monday at 8, so there’s no way any of us could do both. I bet other clubs are starting Monday, too.

I suggest we organise our own intra-club golf day – do it on a Saturday somewhere and have a laugh sometime before the Autumn/Winter weather really kicks in. Any takers? I know of at least 8 golfers in the club off the top of my head.

Well, unusually, the first club night of the season wasn’t all that well attended. I suspect that this is a combination of the end of the holiday season (I know at least 3 people were on holiday this week) and the fact that Thursday nights are always poorly supported.

Selection will begin in earnest on Monday night. The stark and unfortunate truth is that we’re going to really struggle to field 3 teams, let alone 4 this season. It doesn’t take many to drop out to leave a team woefully short, and, as usual, it’s the ladies we’re hurting for. We have something like 8 listed at the moment, and they’re not all definite. That means we can’t field a ‘C’ team if it stays like that. Even with another 2 ladies, we still can’t comfortably play that 3rd team – one reserve!? This is bad. It’s particularly bad because it means that we’d only have team places for 6 gents, and we have 10-12 men wanting to play competitively.

So, what will happen? Would that mean that 4-6 gents will leave to play elsewhere, or, possibly worse, just leave and give up the game? This would be perfectly understandable to me – if you want to play matches, and there’s no place for you at a club, what does it have for you? Worse still, the evil spectre of the rotation system is likely to crop up – surely the worst of all worlds…

And if those extra players leave, and we’re left with only enough members to cover 2 teams, it’s surely only a matter of time (next year, the year after – this year?) that 1 or 2 leave for other reasons, work, family, injury, or whatever, and we’re left with only 1 team, and the process starts again, the extras leave for pastures new that can offer them a game…

Members: Bring ladies! If you are a lady and you haven’t committed to coming down, let us know asap!

Non-members: Bring ladies! Send ladies!

Are you a lady looking to play competitive badminton this season in the Lancaster and Morecambe area? Get in touch, we’ve got teams entered in divisions 2, 4 & 5. Whether we get to play those division 5 teams could be down to you.

email us. Quick!