24-04-2016, 08:03 PM
Robert - the former Home Events Director, Keith did invite clubs to feedback a season or two ago, but if I recall correctly, the response was poor.
My thoughts admittedly are based on the perspective of my own young club (just 6yrs old), which is quite different in many ways to the young average player age, dynamic club of yours. The BA 'just get on with it' attitude is very admirable and the team spirit and so on is evident, even just reading Adam's last post you can see it coming through. The thing is, I just don't see there is many clubs in the mould of BA out there, and the majority have a completely different culture, and are therefore excluded from the Spens/Rich because of the current format.
From my clubs perspective, we tried the Spens out 2013/14 season. Chess wise it was great, and also found the clubs we played to be friendly. What was a bit of a hassle was the date uncertainty, there was some chopping and changing in one round, and 2 away matches was a lot for us and put players off (our players are mainly parents of young kids and older players). I also found as team captain, there was a fair bit of organising to be done in negotiating mid-way points and so on and unexpected costs.
We have since considered re-entering the Spens, and also the Richardsons, but the current venue format simply does not work for us for either to be viable. We are slowly entering more competitions, we have gone from 1 to 3 now, and the SNCL for obvious reasons is ticking lots of boxes for our club and is all but a certainty to be our 4th competition we play in next season.
It would be fantastic if we could add the Spens or Richardsons as one of our competitions we will compete in next season, but it simply needs change and modernisation for that to happen...
My thoughts admittedly are based on the perspective of my own young club (just 6yrs old), which is quite different in many ways to the young average player age, dynamic club of yours. The BA 'just get on with it' attitude is very admirable and the team spirit and so on is evident, even just reading Adam's last post you can see it coming through. The thing is, I just don't see there is many clubs in the mould of BA out there, and the majority have a completely different culture, and are therefore excluded from the Spens/Rich because of the current format.
From my clubs perspective, we tried the Spens out 2013/14 season. Chess wise it was great, and also found the clubs we played to be friendly. What was a bit of a hassle was the date uncertainty, there was some chopping and changing in one round, and 2 away matches was a lot for us and put players off (our players are mainly parents of young kids and older players). I also found as team captain, there was a fair bit of organising to be done in negotiating mid-way points and so on and unexpected costs.
We have since considered re-entering the Spens, and also the Richardsons, but the current venue format simply does not work for us for either to be viable. We are slowly entering more competitions, we have gone from 1 to 3 now, and the SNCL for obvious reasons is ticking lots of boxes for our club and is all but a certainty to be our 4th competition we play in next season.
It would be fantastic if we could add the Spens or Richardsons as one of our competitions we will compete in next season, but it simply needs change and modernisation for that to happen...