At the end of the day any improvement has to come from the ambition of teams and their individual members. Having the infrastructure in place that allows this ambition to be realised is the second ingredient.
If we look at the goals of most players & teams at the moment they can be summarised as winning a tin cup each month to prove they are better than other local teams. This is where the largest part of our player base SHOULD reside and gives us teams that are, as mentioned, crap + 1. These are our local regional tournies that are open to everyone.
What now for these guys? It should be off to low division of a national tournie to play with teams that also win their domestic events. This can mean involve overnight stays, more organisation being needed and a more professional approach being needed instead of showing up in the morning to play. The guys that rise to the top of this are now our crap + 2 teams. Using locked divisions unlike the Open regionals we can progress these teams up so they may end up at crap + ... which is now enough to compete at International Div 1 or 2.
So having conquered the Domestic scene the ambitious teams go abroad to strut their stuff and work up those divisions as well. Then go Pro.
This is my view is the natural progression the tournament teams should be taking. Of course their are exceptions as some teams come together fully formed and skip the first few steps.
What we need to do is identify the bottlenecks to this process. Why do we have plenty of teams at the regional level who don't progress from there?
Is it the cost of moving up each step?? Obviously travelling further and further each time is going to translate to more cash being needed. This may force teams who are of the ability to move out of their little pond to a bigger one to stay where they are.
Best solution I can see if for local tournies to not only offer a monthly tin cup for the casual players but an incentive to step up a level. e.g help with entry fee at the higher level of tournie for a season to make it affordable for their series winners. This should allow the series winners to step up get the new level of competion they need. Industry could also target the sponsorship spread out over lots of teams to those teams that win series/divisions so they can move up.
Same process with the national tounie. Find some way of helping those teams who win divisions so they can play the Internationals as well.
This provides a good motivation to the teams to train and win the valued series sponsorships which will again drive up standards.
Other problems we have is inabilty to train more and therefore bring up the skills needed for the next level of play. This is where siteowners can help. Find some way for people to train more. Evening training on weekdays should become a norm for players that want to progress. Again perhaps sponsor your local series so the top few teams get a very good deal on training/walk on fees. Give these guys a every chance to take that next step!!
I'm sure there more to be said but the above took long enough so I'll leave it there.
If we look at the goals of most players & teams at the moment they can be summarised as winning a tin cup each month to prove they are better than other local teams. This is where the largest part of our player base SHOULD reside and gives us teams that are, as mentioned, crap + 1. These are our local regional tournies that are open to everyone.
What now for these guys? It should be off to low division of a national tournie to play with teams that also win their domestic events. This can mean involve overnight stays, more organisation being needed and a more professional approach being needed instead of showing up in the morning to play. The guys that rise to the top of this are now our crap + 2 teams. Using locked divisions unlike the Open regionals we can progress these teams up so they may end up at crap + ... which is now enough to compete at International Div 1 or 2.
So having conquered the Domestic scene the ambitious teams go abroad to strut their stuff and work up those divisions as well. Then go Pro.
This is my view is the natural progression the tournament teams should be taking. Of course their are exceptions as some teams come together fully formed and skip the first few steps.
What we need to do is identify the bottlenecks to this process. Why do we have plenty of teams at the regional level who don't progress from there?
Is it the cost of moving up each step?? Obviously travelling further and further each time is going to translate to more cash being needed. This may force teams who are of the ability to move out of their little pond to a bigger one to stay where they are.
Best solution I can see if for local tournies to not only offer a monthly tin cup for the casual players but an incentive to step up a level. e.g help with entry fee at the higher level of tournie for a season to make it affordable for their series winners. This should allow the series winners to step up get the new level of competion they need. Industry could also target the sponsorship spread out over lots of teams to those teams that win series/divisions so they can move up.
Same process with the national tounie. Find some way of helping those teams who win divisions so they can play the Internationals as well.
This provides a good motivation to the teams to train and win the valued series sponsorships which will again drive up standards.
Other problems we have is inabilty to train more and therefore bring up the skills needed for the next level of play. This is where siteowners can help. Find some way for people to train more. Evening training on weekdays should become a norm for players that want to progress. Again perhaps sponsor your local series so the top few teams get a very good deal on training/walk on fees. Give these guys a every chance to take that next step!!
I'm sure there more to be said but the above took long enough so I'll leave it there.