One in, four out for IC11

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Authored by: Jens Djernes
on Tuesday, May 03 2011 @ 01:17 am ACST

Why do you keep on talking about divisions? I would never pay 5000AUS$ to play in a tournament, with no chance of taking The Cup with me home.

For what reason should we split the bad and the pour teams up into divisions. If you only want to have the "best" teams competing for the Cup, fine with me. Do it like in Soccer, make qualification-rounds. You could say top-3 from each continent or a'like.... Then tell the nations about it... AFL can't expect nations to spend that much money, to go to a tournament, without having a chance to take home the cup.

Did australias mens handball-team do well in the world cup??? danish television compared them to danish amateur-teams... Same in soccer European Championships, no-one expected Denmark to win any games. they took away the Cup...

Don't underestimate lower-ranked teams, they might do well. And if not, they deffinately learn from the experience. Having played several games losing by 100points, i kinow what it's like, and i know how much you learn from it. Don't take that away from nations like China, india, etc....

One in, four out for IC11

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Tuesday, May 03 2011 @ 10:34 am ACST

Hi Jens,

I understand your sentiment, but in answer to your question the reason we keep talking about divisions is because:

- the AFL has said it is likely
- it is very difficult in a short space of time to have more than 10 or so teams in a division get a fair chance to compete for the top prize
- although you may not like the idea of playing in division 2 some nations actually want that, e.g. see Chinese perspective on IC08

You might think some nations might be expected to be lowly but surprise and win. I think this is clearly wrong. Leading into the last 2 Cups we did predictions about results and were overwhelmingly accurate. The chances of a bottom 6 ranked side making the grand final are so small that it is reasonable to not consider it.

Do you really learn more from a 200 point loss than a 70 point loss? Because that is what the newest sides are facing if they play a full scale match against the top couple of teams. The gap is so large that fortunately the top few teams already actually tend to rest some of their stars in those matches.

My bottom line is that we talk about it because it is likely (unless the number of nations shrinks further) so we're just tryng to work out what we think the best mix is, and I think many nations want it that way.

I would think it a good thing to go with the aim of winning a "Developing Nations Cup" rather than going knowing deep down that you are simply trying to minimise the damage.

And if the AFL use an initial day of lightning tournament matches to seed nations, then everyone would be in with a chance anyway.

---
Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

One in, four out for IC11

Authored by: Cam Homes
on Tuesday, May 03 2011 @ 04:19 pm ACST

G'Day Jens.

I have to agree with Brett when we discuss the IC being split into divisions. You say players learn from being thrashed by a superior opposition but I'd have to say they actually learn precious little. If you are a "spectator" on the field(cause you are one those players who didn't even get a touch of the ball let alone a kick)in one of those 200 to zilch matches you learn no more than a spectator standing in the grandstand. Experience tells me that, sure I enjoyed playing against better players and learning from them but they were the guys that were maybe only 4 or 5 goals better than us.

I recall that I learnt that the goal posts were somewhere to hide behind to shelter from the wind and rain when I was resting in our forward lines and my team was getting a 28-30 goal to 0 flogging :-) And having regular floggings like that certainly didn't encourage me to continue to play Aussie Rules.

I think India and China probably felt like that after IC08 and the same sentiment has been expressed by some of the Finland players after the European Champs last year when they were winless. By the way, there were a number of 100+ point wins in that competition and all but Iceland and Croatia were in the top 15 ranks

Although the spread of points(from top to bottom) in our world rankings is not large the difference in standard and ability of the teams from top to bottom is enormous.(and thats not counting Aussie).

The divisions will prevent the newcomers from playing matches that benefit nobody, (players, teams, spectators, the IC, nor footy) eg 100 or even 200 to 0 losses.

---
Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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