Hi Vultures,
SUMMER ’21 FINALS
Please find details below of a recent development with regards to Summer Season ’21 finals.
In summary, we have been advised the following from MEBA, the local Association that runs our competitions:
- Due to technical difficulties with PlayHQ meaning that some results have not been captured, the decision has been made that grand finals cannot be played
- Each team will now play an additional game that was originally scheduled for Grand Final week
- Team Managers will need to collect teamsheet money for this extra game (if they did not allow for it in their initial collection)
Obviously we are disappointed with this development, as the club has worked hard to have our teams up and ready for a competitive season, including a grand final. We have advised MEBA of our view, and encouraged them to look at various alternate options, but it is ultimately out of our control.
We have included the key points below from the MEBA comms received this week to provide the full context behind their decision.
At this stage we are gearing up for a normal, full Winter season, including finals, starting in April, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed that all the technical gremlins have been solved and that we can stay lockdown free.
Regards,
Vultures Committee
MEBA communication:
As we returned to competition, clubs were advised that the competition would run Grand Finals for the Summer ’21 season between 1st and 2nd on the Ladder at the end of the regular season. Unfortunately, the Executive must now advise that this is no longer possible. We have been made aware of a significant issue with PlayHQ not retaining match scores if the match day is not completed properly. Once the scores are lost, the PlayHQ system cannot retrieve the data.
Since being advised of this issue we have implemented new procedures to avoid this problem in the future, however, as you can imagine, by not having the scores/results of a large number of matches early in the season the integrity of the competition is severely impacted from ladder positions to percentages.
In addition to the significant issue faced with missing results in PlayHQ, we believe there are other competition integrity issues affecting the Summer ’21 season including:
- The rules around fill-in players were significantly relaxed for the Summer ’21 season to ensure clubs/teams avoided walkovers as much as possible to keep the kids on court. By allowing players to play multiple games in a day, often in the same age group we have impacted the results of games with players of higher quality playing in lower grades/age groups etc. Under the normal ruling only players from lower age groups could fill in for a team resulting in better management of the process.
- Despite not having a formal grading process, teams that were clearly graded too high or too low have been moved which has occurred throughout the season. In a normal season, when we complete the 6-week grading process, competition ladders are reset to allow for an even playing field for all teams post-grading. However, as this season had no formal grading process the ladders were not reset. This has put those teams moved at either a significant advantage (if graded too low as they have won by large margins) or a significant disadvantage (if graded too high as they would have been considerably beaten).
- Due to the circuit-breaker lockdown we lost another round from an already-condensed season. If these games had proceeded, we could have seen teams near the top 2 miss out on playing a lower placed team and potentially moving up the ladder. When the round was cancelled, we have found that all teams scheduled to have a bye that week have been credited by PlayHQ with 3pts (a win) while all of the teams scheduled to play have received zero points.
As such, the competition will not be holding grand finals for the Summer ’21 season and will now be running an additional round on the proposed Grand Final day allowing all teams the opportunity to play another game prior to the school holidays.
We appreciate that the kids and parents alike enjoy playing off for the medals come grand final time and understand the decision made will not please everyone, however, we always work to ensure decisions made try to achieve the best outcome for the majority of members, which for the shortened Summer ’21 season was all about getting as many kids back on court playing again and not necessarily the end result.
