Writer: Anthony Featherstone
Editor: Ali Thomas
Here we take a look at the B Tour event from
Cardiff. Given the size of B Tour, I am being fairly liberal with what this
encompasses, including the bottom of the Cardiff A Tour and occasionally
tapping into C Tour as well.
The top of B Tour can
challenge for A Tour
With several of the regular A Tour teams not entering, this
gave a chance for some of the teams near the top of B Tour to have a go at the
more established A Tour teams. Whilst some of these games looked comfortable,
most of them looked very competitive, with the deciding factor often being the
number of unforced errors teams made. Making the step up means that teams are
less and less likely to give you a second chance, and from pool play the teams
which have had A Tour experience or pedigree at these higher levels seemed to
come out on top.
Looking at one of the A/B Tour pols, whilst not looking good
on the surface for Camden, I am informed that games were competitive and simple
errors cost them the wins, and they were able to turn things around on Sunday,
reversing their result against BAF in the brackets. In the opposing pool, it
looked like Birmingham were the biggest movers. They have had A Tour experience
not so long ago and despite a relatively small but skilled squad, they can
certainly challenge the top teams on most days. Cobras were perhaps the one
outfit which didn’t challenge as much as they would have liked.
Any GB team will be
good.
The question is how good, and is this reflected in their
seeding? We saw this last year when it came to the U24 squads in both Mixed and
Open Tour. They were all seeded around the bottom of A Tour/top of B Tour (or
equivalent placings in Mixed), and worked themselves up to the level of
established A Tour teams. We saw exactly the same with the GB U20’s this time
around, going undefeated to finish 21st with their closest game
being a 15-9 win. This begs the question: how far could this side go given the
chance to have a crack at some of the higher placed teams, and is the future
looking bright for the GB program?
Home advantage?
Simply looking at whose has gained/lost the most seeds,
South Wales Storm 1 gained an impressive 12 seeds (starting 34th,
finishing 22nd). Their seconds also had a decent showing, gaining 4
seeds. Having not entered Tour 1 there is an argument to say they were under-seeded,
but nonetheless you still have to go out and deliver the performances. It’s no
windfarm, but conditions were still not the kindest at times over the weekend,
so to come out with what looked like fairly comfortable wins is impressive.
Patience, persistence
and training pays off
There are several teams that have long been near the top of B
Tour and are relishing the exciting chance that Tour 3 brings, with WUCC taking
away the top three teams. Tom alluded to this in his article, but there are
several teams which will look to give a big challenge to those at the top.
Cloud City and Camden are two London sides (one north and one south) who have been
competing with each other for a while, this time Cloud City came out on top
14-8. Vision are another team in this camp who may well be eyeing up some
scalps at Tour 3. Both BAF and Purple Cobras will have a point to prove after a
disappointing Tournament, dropping 9 and 8 seeds respectively. Reading 2 will
be looking to make an impact, having made A Tour at Nottingham, but were then
pushed down to 16th at Cardiff – how they do without the support of
a few first team players will certainly be interesting to watch.
How to balance
development and performance
Both Bristol’s and Devon’s first teams had good weekends by
most people’s standards, Devon 1 finishing third, and Bristol 1 finishing eighth.
The same can’t be said of their second teams however, with Bristol 2 losing 7 seeds
in 32nd and Devon 2 finishing down 9 seeds at 28th. Have
they sacrificed on development to boost their first team performance? Only they
will truly know, but it will be interesting to see how they come out at Tour 3;
is it a one-off blip?
On the flip side, EMO 2 produced a good performance to push
up into the final A Tour positions, coming out on top IN close games against
Cloud City and Brighton Gritty Legends. And whenever there are good development
stories, it always feels like Reading get a mention, but when you have a first
team challenging the top four, a second team at the A/B Tour boundary and a third
team rocking around C Tour, someone must be doing something right.
I think I should also mention Sharkbear, a team largely made
up of Warwick university freshers (known as the Warwick Bears). Whilst being
nowhere near the top, this is great development for their players and it will
be interesting to see them in next year’s uni season.
Multiple events
One of the complaints of the sister B Tour events last year
was that numbers were too low, making them uncompetitive until bracket play.
Looking over at that schedule, the scorelines didn’t look too different to
those of the Cardiff event with some closer and some less close. It certainly
looked better by virtue of far fewer teams being capped this year compared to
last year. I would say it looks to have improved, but it would be interesting
to see what the players thought of it as well.
This feeds into the more generic conversation of what Tour should
be in the future (both Mixed and Open/Women’s). Capacity is becoming an issue
at venues, so the question of logistics is becoming more pressing. Does the
current method of splitting the events work, should there be more teams the
sister event, or should there be some different solution altogether?
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