What is the "best" team?

olymacfoogal

I know I asked this in another thread but not many ppl posted about it and the thread kinda wandered off as they tend to do...:D

So I was thinking about what was said and I was wondering why is it we use 5 team members? why not 3 or 7 or 10? I mean 5's not a bad number but what was the reasoning behind picking the 5 best to represent a college? is that reasoning still sound these days with so many more shooters per college?

Everyone that commented on the last thread was saying that the club that can consistently produce a high scoring team no matter what is the best team. I was thinking that if we raised the number of members in the team (a pain in the arse I know) then the emphasis would be on the college which attracts the most members and trains its beginners well. The bigger the number the more the focus is on the team rather than any individual. Clubs are then rewarded for taking in more ppl to the sport and coaching them.

In short: the "best" archery team would represent the "best" archery college. Best meaning bringing as many suckers as we can into the sport.

Do ye agree? Please do post what you think, the more opinions the better. Opinions about the topic are the bestest.

:pac::eek::):( yellow dude eats blue dude and turns purple. this is funny ya?

Aryzel

In generic terms 'Best' is a completely arbitary definition. You have to set a criteria and then it can be possible to find out who is best at fullfiilling those criteria. So saying that a team that gets 10 people to shoot 400 is better than a team that gets 3 people to shoot 550 is completely meaningless, its just a matter of opinion.

Simply put increasing the team size much would make it a challenge to just field a team for most clubs. The standard in other archery competitions is actually 3-4 people per team. Really the team size works on two criteria: First, you want to have some variablity in the teams, you don't want the exact same 5 people making up the team score every time, you increase the team size until this is true, currently its true for teams of 5. Second, you want pretty much all clubs to be easily able to field full teams for every competitions, you don't want more than 10% of the teams to fail this, you decrease the team size until this is true, again this is roughly where we are atm with teams of 5.

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So I was thinking about what was said and I was wondering why is it we use 5 team members? why not 3 or 7 or 10? I mean 5's not a bad number but what was the reasoning behind picking the 5 best to represent a college? is that reasoning still sound these days with so many more shooters per college?

- There are much the same numbers shooting now as several years ago, there hasn't actually being any change. 5 people per team seems like a nice balance, it gives enough room for people to compete for spots in a team, you rarely get all 5 spots completely dominated for long. And it doesn't put excess pressure on clubs attempting to field a full team. At the moment there is still 1-3 clubs every competition who are unable to field a full team. Raising the team size would mean more teams not making the cut.

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Everyone that commented on the last thread was saying that the club that can consistently produce a high scoring team no matter what is the best team.

Ok, this is really stupid. The very definition of the best team is the one what produces the highest score. To make it extremely simple, what you are saying is that everyone agreeded that: "The team that wins, has won", definitely a brilliant insight!
Also, the 'no matter what', can be interperted two ways from the sentence, either its a criteria applied to all teams, in which case its part of the definition of which team is best, so it becomes redundant to emphasis it. Or its a criteria applied to a single teams (or subgroup of teams), in which case, no team can survive any arbitrary critera (ie, UCD archers will now have to shoot blindfolded from 1,000 yards).

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I was thinking that if we raised the number of members in the team (a pain in the arse I know) then the emphasis would be on the college which attracts the most members and trains its beginners well. The bigger the number the more the focus is on the team rather than any individual. Clubs are then rewarded for taking in more ppl to the sport and coaching them.

- If it is a pain in the arse why do you suggest it?
- Your right, raising the numbers would put emphasis on colleges that recruit and train better. In fact that is what the competition would become. The winning team is no longer the team that is best at archery, it is the club that is best at recruitment and training, those are the talents you are rewarding. I can just see it now....and the winner of the Irish University Training and Recruitment League is ....
- Also what do you think is the right number? 200 per team? 100? 50? I'm going to guess you will immediately think that 200 is stupid (and it is), but do you know why it is stupid? Think about it, figure out exactly why such numbers are not a good idea. Then do the same for 10 people per team, its harder with 10, but you'll be amazed the things you can do when you try thinking.

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In short: the "best" archery team would represent the "best" archery college. Best meaning bringing as many suckers as we can into the sport.

- So your not really asking to increase the team size (thats just a mechanism), the underlying change your asking for, is that the league be changed into a competition in 'bringing as many suckers as we can into the sport'. Understand I'm using extreme restraint here when I simply say 'No thanks'. By the way have you ever heard of the phrase 'Quality over Quantity' ?

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Do ye agree? Please do post what you think, the more opinions the better. Opinions about the topic are the bestest.
- Personally I'm of the opinion that the opinion that more opinions is better is wrong Punctuation left out on purpose


Dermot

Renegade_Archer

Sweet jesus, we've been ticking along nicely since the start of the decade with this system, please leave it alone and get on with the bloody shooting.


Five is a fine number. It's not very hard for a start-up club to get five shooters together and compete in the league, and it's challenging for an established club to get 5 good on-form shooters to win the league.


In short, it works.

olymacfoogal

not to sure how to multiple quote so i didnt bother my hole.

peoples definition of best depends on their own values/opinions, so they define the criteria for the "best" team built around these values. whats the problem?

in the last thread there was a bit of crying about the rule change to 5 best intervarsity's and whether or not this is a better way of selecting the best team. nuig shot a team league record twice but it was ucd who consistently produced a good, sorry great team throughout the year. we where shooting the **** about that whole thing.

if you look at the number of people going to the intervarsity's since the ucd website started then the numbers have actually increased alot since 2000-2001. i counted.

the idea of raising the team size would be to put pressure on teams to bring as many ppl as possible to competitions. i suggested it because of the reasons i gave.

for best team im obviously not talking about the best team on one day, ffs of course its gonna be the highest scoring team, im talking about over an intervarsity season where individuals might have to pull out for personal reasons, different exam timetables for differents uni's etc, it goes back to the best 5/ all scores debate.

200/team. your not showing too much restraint on the piss taking front here are you? yes i think clubs should be rewarded for taking in and training beginners. at the minute i think the team number is too low and places too much emphasis on individuals. a higher number would lessen this emphasis (yes lessen but not take away completely) and encourage clubs blah de blah its written above.

i dont want to totally strip away the individual aspect. its about passing on the sport. the more the merrier. saying i want quantity over quality suggests you didnt get what i was saying, having more per team means the club with the highest number of quality archers wins.

its a pain in the arse to change but it could be worth it if its a better system.

did anyone agree with what i was saying?

dermot you've killed my love of archery boards.

Aryzel

l not to sure how to multiple quote so i didnt bother my hole.
- Its not proper quoting, I just copy/paste and put italics on the lines.

the idea of raising the team size would be to put pressure on teams to bring as many ppl as possible to competitions. i suggested it because of the reasons i gave.
- Not all clubs can reasonable increase in size from what they are atm. UCD are best placed of all the colleges to put out a larger team, ye have the largest student base in an easily accessible college campus. Increasing the team size is easier for some clubs than others. Also remember all clubs go through cycles, before the end of my first year in UCD, I was the sole remaining member and had to build it up from there. Some clubs are on a high atm but not all, you should not set the bar so high that only a handful of clubs can meet it.

having more per team means the club with the highest number of quality archers wins.
- This is only true if teams are able to recruit, train and field full teams at every competition, that barely happens now. If a club is unable to field a full team for even one compeittion they pretty much automatically lose the season. For example UCD only had 5 people at this years Maynooth IV, if the team size was bigger they would have no chance at winning the season.
- Clubs that recuit and train up alot of people are already rewarded, because they can bring alot of people to the competition, and all of them can shoot, and then just the best scores are picked. That is a serious advantage right there. And one of the major reasons why UCD has tradionally done so well, UCD has always had a large team. With the current limit of 5, a small club can still have a chance of competing, if you increase the limit then some clubs can not compete.
- Increasing the team size, ads alot more pressure for not much gain. If you increase the team size, it does not take the emphasis off individuals, it puts the emphasis on the individuals with the low scores, because that is were they competitions will be won as there is alot more margin for improvement.


dermot you've killed my love of archery boards.
- Well gee sorry, but you put forward an idea that fundementally changes the league in a way that puts small and new clubs at a disadvantage, of course I'm going to come down hard against it. (And if I get the impression that someone is giving such a suggestion without thinking it through properly, I'm going to be abit narky in my response, you should have know everything I was going to say and addressed those issues before you gave your suggestion). Maybe I'm less inclined to be patient with people now than I used to be, one of the others from back then would have to say, I think I'll put it down to old age :P

- If you believe your suggestion will make the league better then you should be willing to fight tooth and nail for it. You shouldn't be looking for opinions, you should be putting your suggest down in exact detail, give all the arguements that support it. Also give all the obvious counter arguements, and explain for each one why they are wrong. Do that and you've got me convinced and you should be able to get your suggestion implemented.


Dermot

johnreck

also you need to consider firstly the number of archers that a hosting collage can have, at the moment it is about 10 archers per team. so roughly half of each collages archers make up the team score. next would it be fair to say that the larger colleges potentially have larger numbers in there clubs and as such could have a larger pool to call on putting smaller and newer clubs at a disadvantage.

olymacfoogal

The smaller and newer clubs will always be at a disadvantage no matter what the team size. they aint gonna have just 5 brilliant shooters and no one else there...

I'm finished up this year so wont be pushing to change any rules. we shouldnt be afraid to tho, sports like formula one change their rules every year and the olympic archery format changed and made it loads better.
if it works dont fix it unless ye can make it better approach. nothing wrong with being creative and trying a few things out. A team shoot off at the end of the year could be good. Like having a league and a cup at the end. from each college or summit. At this stage its fairly clear where everyones gonna finish so it could keep it interesting...

Azryl your 2nd post made a lot more sense to me except for the bit about predicting what your going to say and address those issues... how am i meant to predict what your going to say?

Hats off to you for putting in the time and effort to set down all the rules in the first place, i can understand ye getting pissed at me for suggesting they should be changed.

if i have a bit of spare time i might take a look at the results this year and see what changing the team size does to the final scores.

Aryzel

The smaller and newer clubs will always be at a disadvantage no matter what the team size. they aint gonna have just 5 brilliant shooters and no one else there...
They might not have 5 great archers, but they should be able to get 5 people at least. But if teams are 7+ they might not be able to 7 people for all competitions.


Aryzel your 2nd post made a lot more sense to me except for the bit about predicting what your going to say and address those issues... how am i meant to predict what your going to say?
-The main concern with increasing team size was obviously going to be how it would effect small clubs, you should have tried to address that concern in your proposal. Basically try to think of every possible effect the change could have :P Its not as bad as it sounds once you get used to doing it.


Hats off to you for putting in the time and effort to set down all the rules in the first place, i can understand ye getting pissed at me for suggesting they should be changed.
- I strongly believe that whoever is running the league shouldn't be afraid to change the rules as they see fit (its actually written in the rules). But I don't think this particular change would be good for the league, it puts excessive pressure on small clubs for neglible gain.

MicS

I've run a quick check what could have been if 6 or 7 people made a team. And in the previous 3 seasons top three team remained unchanged. Only current season changes because UCD had only 5 people in Maynooth IV and therefore moves to the second place in standings, and UCD gets a team league record with the last shoot in GMIT, which in reality we didn't reach by 7 points.

So I'd say that this change does not mean much for leading teams, but gives disadvantage to smaller teams. It's also a strain for hosts with smaller halls, especially as number of participating teams is increasing now.

olymacfoogal

Okay, bad idea...