Eurobowl Wales Feedback Thread

[howlinggriffon]

I think I got lucky and played six different races in the EurOpen - Humans, Chaos Dwarfs, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Amazons and then Wood Elves.

Restricting team choice for seems a bit much. There's already a restriction that coaches can't use the same team as one of their teammates. If we then say that you have to have different Tiers are well then it'll be less attractive. The good thing about people using so many Tier 1 teams is that it really is very competitive - surely this is what the pinnacle of Blood Bowl tournaments should be striving for?

[Barney the Lurker]

I always think its better to reward taking lower tiers and encourage diversity rather than outright force people to take the different tiers, which could possibly skew the rankings.

With such a big event there is room enough I think for the people at the top to try and do as best as they can with the power teams, while still allowing others to take the lower tiers and still have a good time.

Its also worth noting that the most popular team, Dark Elves, were only represented 30 times which means that still more teams didn't take them than did.

[Joemanji]

Always better in these circumstances to offer the carrot not the stick. People who stump up ticket, flights and hotels should not be dictated to as to which race they use.

[Pipey]

Maybe EO could stay as it is but use the Tier Score as a tiebreaker (before individual wins, SoS etc.), much like NAFWC rules will be doing next year i.e. in the event of a tie on team wins, the team taking the lowest tiered races is placed higher. Take 3 x Tier 1 and you are never going to win that tiebreak... Food for thought?

Just to be clear on the original suggestion - my thought is to use total tier score (1+2+3 etc.) it as a tiebreaker so would not involve forcing any choices.

[Boneless]

All these are useful for poland Thank you for many many kind comments.


One on timings, no Venue in cardiff was happy to put 400 nerds through for food at the same time - add into the mix the staggered feeding of refs. Cant ref, put in data and eat at same time can we?

those who wanted 2.30 games over the 2.15 games, as many complained that the day finished to late. we couldn't do one with out the other - sorry.

as for the dice kicking event, and if i was not harsh enough, sorry but the situation was taken care of as was every one as per the circumstance. I spoke with the captain he apologised instantly, no ifs no buts, nothing. the coach came to me as soon as he returned to his table and apologised at least three times, I repeated my sentiment, again no excuses no ifs no buts.

in the UK there tents to be a sorry i did it because, or sorry but... they was both i believe upset that the situation had caused offence that was enough punishment imo.

And who said i cant be a people person haha.

[landrover]

Feedback for Cardiff from a ref's standpoint.

1. The ref station could be better placed in the middle of a long edge of the hall (as at NAFC in Nottingham), rather than at one end. This is for ease of accessibility by players and refs.

2. I don't know how much went into the translation of the rules pack into languages other then English, but that would be a definite plus in my book.

3. The ref to player ratio was about right from my perspective.

4. No photo station or anything else near the refs station. This is because the ref team has to enter nearly 400 players' worth of data accurately. AND recheck it all, prior to generating the next round. Any and all people looking over the table and saying 'can I just get...' will receive very short shrift or run the risk of us getting results wrong.

5. The food has been mentioned many times as dry on Day 1 and good on 2. I'll second those comments. And admit to having seconds of the curry.

6. Staggering the start times of the two events was genius. If you want to mess with that, make the stagger 30 minutes instead of 60. Otherwise leave it.

Thoughts for Poland & Malta:

1. Consider putting clocks on every table and making their use compulsory. It moves the tournament along and takes a huge amount of work away from the refs.

2. Give each coach 1 hour and 7 minutes on their clock, and let them use it as they see fit. Whether it be going to the bar, the toilet, or actually playing BB.

3. Complaints procedure. This is a nightmare place for an organiser. If someone makes a complaint, then it needs to be dealt with firmly and fairly in as quick a time as possible to prevent the game losing out too much. One complaint at Cardiff came from one coach complaining about a rules violation, then the other calling a ref back to complain about the length of time it took to make the decision and demanding that their clock have time added to it as compensation. No, no, and no. We were not in a position to delay the entire tournament just over one game.

4. Red an yellow cards for bad or unsportsmanlike behaviour. I'm not talking about the stupid football system where you get shown repeated yellow cards that have no effect. Use the rugby format where if you misbehave, you sit out 10 minutes while your clock runs down. Second offence and you're out of the game and/or the tournament.

5. If the cards don't appeal, maybe docking points, either individual or team instead.

6. Timings. Leave it at two hours and 15. Give coaches 5 minutes to find their chairs by app, screen of website, then make sure that they understand that the game finishes on time. Data entry is a nightmare at the best of times.

Lastly,

It was my honour to be asked to help ref at the EuroBowl and Europen.
I and my fellow refs gave freely of our own time and money to help support our hobby.
We enjoyed most of it and some of us recorded upwards of 12 miles walked per day.

The worst part of it was when we suffered verbal abuse.
I was personally swore at in a very nasty way four times on Day 1 alone, and a total of six times over the tournament.

This is not acceptable.

You were playing with toy soldiers. Dollies if you prefer.

Since when does that make it acceptable to abuse the very people who would rather have been playing, but chose to help you out instead?

And the rants of the Italian and Danish players to name but two are also out of order. Throwing items across the hall risks injury. Or, if you want to look at it another way, how would you like all of your minis scattered across the table by someone else's dice cup towards the end of the game when things are getting close?

Ask yourselves this: would you behave like that or swear at the venue staff? The catering staff? The bar staff?

Well don't behave like that to the refs and your fellow players.

I have taken the decision not to volunteer to referee any future events after the behaviour of the coaches at Cardiff. I am not alone in making that decision.
If measures were put in place to protect the refs from such vitriolic attacks, I and others would reconsider. But not until then.

Cardiff was magnificently organised and run, but once again, the actions of a few let down the majority.

Edited for spelling.

[PeteW]

Dear Landrover

I'm really sorry that you suffered verbal abuse - that is totally unacceptable. I hope the coaches responsible are suitably embarrassed, and if they read this then they should send you an apology.

Thankfully, all 6 of my opponents were great sports. I did have an unpleasant game on one occasion this year, and the coach in question emailed me after the event to apologise, which was very good of him.

Thank you for your generous voluntary service, and it is our loss that a few cretins have put you off volunteering in the future.

Pete

[Purplegoo]

I was sad to hear of this when we spoke on the Saturday, landrover, and I am even sadder to hear it's put you off volunteering in future. We're not exactly overrun with willing volunteers, so it is frustrating to hear we've lost a good one.

People get passionate about their hobby time and with some it does cause unreasonable, probably uncharacteristic overreactions when they don't get what they want. I'm sure you can imagine some of the e-mails I occasionally get! I hope that after some time away, we will once again be able to make use of your mic skills. I hope not to hear of similar incidents at the World Cup or in Poland; the people who volunteer to referee are valuable members of a big tournament team, and we should all be looking after and supporting them. I'll speak to the organisers of the tournaments mentioned ahead of time and consider if our general ref support mechanisms / rules need improvement in light of your post.

[Jip]

Cardiff was magnificently organised and run, but once again, the actions of a few let down the majority.

Sad to read that. I've heard a couple of stories about behaviour since getting home and finding out how everyone else's tournament went.

The suspected theft of Thrudball funds and someone allegedly mocking another player who had Autism are just two examples.

Guess you're always going to get a small percentage of idiots, but NAFC was a big tournament and I didn't hear stuff like this, after that.