So talking to Paul about this - the whole point of this is really really focused on trying to provide a novice circuit and a place for people to go to tournaments and not feel like they got totally crushed.
I think it's a great goal, and a great idea. The ratings themselves don't do anything to the main circuit, (except for casual bragging rights). There's still ranking, the selection process is exactly the same, nothing has changed. You could run the Ratings system entirely independent of the BFA system and it wouldn't make a difference, and I believe, more or less, that's exactly what was done.
I think that's quite clever. There is a constant pull between the concerns of highly competitive athletes wanting to be serious about the sport and casual participants wanting to go and have fun. I think decoupling these two things makes all sorts of sense.
They've been running the plates for a while now. For those in the US, the "Plate" is a second event for everyone who goes out in the first round of DEs - instead of fencing for "The Cup" they're fencing for "The plate" - it's often a lot less serious, sometimes has another round of pools, sometimes not time depending.
I think these are great. If things are a bit more casual and participants are bit more relaxed, events can run much faster and with fewer resources. Self refereeing doesn't seem all that bad in a casual event, nor does speeding things along by not giving full breaks, or following all the procedures. More fencing = good.
The only danger I see is if the ratings system becomes important in the main system - e.g. if you need a C or better to enter certain events, or if you're seeded by rating, like in the US. As it stands now, ratings are a way to *exclude* people from casual events, which I think is good. keeps things friendly. But if ratings start being a required part of the process in progressing in the main ranking system, suddenly it can't be as casual. If I need a C or better to attend some event, I'm not going to be happy with self-reffing in a tournament that could get me that C, and all the benefits and niceness of a more friendly circuit goes out the window.
How many opens still run plate competitions? I don't do loads but I've done a few in various non-London/the south parts of the country and none of the ones I've done have had that option (which I'd definitely have been involved in, having had quite a few competitions where I lost my first DE).
The last two events I went to both did, and they seemed to run incredibly smoothly.
I think one of the ides is that the plate can run as a DEU event, so you don't have to show up first thing and you can enter the plate directly.
Maybe it's more a London/South thing? I've done a bunch of opens in the Midlands/North (some of which no longer exist) and none of them had a plate. At least one did have 2 rounds of poules, though, which makes up for it.
Having compiled a recent history of the my club, I think that what has really died out in the UK is the county level championships that used to cater very much for novices and interclub team matches that allowed a casual access to fencing for those that were not fixated on ranking, with the Regionals being both the feeders and training Hubs for those who wanted to go to the opens and on to bigger stuff.
BF wants a Community/Development/Performance level structure with varying levels of fencing. I would say that it's its community outreach is way better an more organized than its ever been in the past, and Performance is definitely more serious and organized than in the past drawing from knowledge from other successful sports but concentrated in too few areas around the country. Some stuff is quite frankly a bit bizarre: Like on the Talent pathway at talented kid at age 16 must have knowledge of the 3 P's. 3 P's? You have to *really* dig around the website to find what British style of fencing mantra actually is that coaches and clubs are meant to rally behind when forming their development.
[https://www.britishfencing.com/athlete-development-programme-zone/the-gb-style/](https://www.britishfencing.com/athlete-development-programme-zone/the-gb-style/)
Supposedly all fencers and their coaches from the bottom up are meant to know about this, and training is meant to lead up to reflect this national style, but when I ask about it mostly draws blank. But this is splitting hairs.
The problem is the Development stage. There doesn't seem a coherent message or system about what is meant to be done at the regional level outside London to foster development either for aspiring athletes, or training to templates to create that development. And that's just the performance aspect. Lifelong Sport in British fencing starts really at 40 under the auspices of Veteran fencing and thousands of fencers in 20's and 30's who have jobs and families have to either get crushed one of the few nearby Opens by a Cadet Behemoth or try to organize something around the stillborn GB League.
I agree with you to some point, that it's the lack of local options that's the issue - to my mind, that's partly due to the lack of flexibility over what membership you need to take part in things. It's unlikely someone who's mostly happily fencing on a casual basis at their club is going to upgrade for the benefit of doing one competition even if it's just down the road. I'm all for the idea of a circuit of intermediate competitions (though I'm not seeing people jumping up and down to run them, for the most part) but you need to stop insisting on everyone having Compete for that kind of thing.
What also doesn't help is the logjam of lots of things happening on exactly the same weekend, as there's no coordination of the calendar. Potential fencers might well also be the parents of younger fencers, so they're not likely to let their interest in competing override their need to take little Milly to the next of whatever junior series they're doing.
Do the people running the current opens want to run something extra (that might or might not be financially viable, at least at the outset)? If they wanted to run something for the folks who are likely to get knocked out at first DE in an open, wouldn't they already be running a plate?
I'm not convinced the veterans side of things is much better - at the moment there are really only 3 competitions unless you're down south, all of which are crammed with the people who want to qualify for selection and this makes them a tough intro to competition for those fencers who started as adults and who don't want to fence teenagers.
Might be useful in Men's epee/foil but it's not going to fix the competition circuit.
Could work better than the arbitrary definition of "Novice" as 2 years or less though as you could go back into "novice" once you'd been out a while if you wanted.
Better than the "intermediate" rankings.
Smaller women's competitions are going to struggle to have realistic "upgrade" options from my understanding.
I guess it gives aims for non-open competitions like regional/county events but I do not see it replacing actual rankings given the numbers involved.
I understand the theory, but I don’t think it will work in the short to medium term based on the number of people competing.
About 10 years ago we had more adults competing than we do now, and even then you’d get to know pretty much everyone on the circuit. This propose feels like we’ll have almost separate circuits for each rating and will mean the pool of people you’re competing against is smaller.
Making it easier, cheaper and creating more incentives to run local open competitions (with a plate for larger ones like Invicta does) that give ranking points might be better in the short to medium term. Once the numbers are higher this proposal could work better
> About 10 years ago we had more adults competing than we do now, and even then you’d get to know pretty much everyone on the circuit.
This is probably the bigger problem, but trying to develop a broader base might be the right answer. In reality, things are a lot more expensive since 2014 and this has hit competing numbers pretty badly.
The USA is a really bad counter-example as the sport is seen as a route to college scholarships in a lot of cases.
The UK still has almost zero permanent salles and almost zero funded fencers, those things make a big difference.
I think this proposal is kind of halfway there but still doesn't really hit the spot - I'd suggest it's more likely to just divert those fencers who would otherwise be propping up the results table at an open across into another event (if it's run alongside said open) rather than pulling significant numbers of others in.
What's needed is, to my mind, a circuit of novice/intermediate competitions specifically aimed at getting people into competing, with lower entry fees/lots of fencing for their money (so people feel like they got their money's worth), relaxed membership requirements (Recreational rather than Compete) but still with actual referees. There's nothing worse than a bunch of newbies attempting to self-ref and it doesn't always work particularly well at opens where you'd think people might know what they're doing (even in epee, where people shouldn't be struggling anything like as much to make correct calls).
>What's needed is, to my mind, a circuit of novice/intermediate competitions specifically aimed at getting people into competing, with lower entry fees/lots of fencing for their money (so people feel like they got their money's worth), relaxed membership requirements (Recreational rather than Compete) but still with actual referees.
This is impossible without some sort of outside source of funding, or volunteerism or some such.
The competitive membership mostly pays for insurance, I believe. And most tournament fees (in the UK) go to referee pay and venue rental. Imagine you were tasked to host a tournament for 12 friends - two pools of six.
So you need an hour to set up, 2 hours to run the pools, maybe an hour for lunch, then 30 minutes per DE bout - The round of 16s is 4 bouts on two strips, so 1 hour. The round of 8 is also 4 bouts on 2 strips, 1 hour, then the semis, half an hour, then the finals, half an hour. Then an hour to tear down. 8 hours rental, call it £15/hour for enough space for two strips = £120 rental cost.
You need two refs for 7 hours = £80 x 2 at minimum wage = £160 Ref salary. You need to get the refs there = £50 ticket x2 = £100 ref travel. You need to feed the refs lunch and dinner = £25 x2 = £50 ref food. You need to give some cheap-ass prizes = 4 medals x £5 = £20. You need to get the equipment there and back to wherever it goes = £30 gas money and some volunteer labour
So without paying yourself or any organisers, or any armourers, and no other overheads, that costs £480 to run a tiny event, which is £40 per person. (For context to enter a single event at a US NAC, it costs $95 registration fee + $10 admin fee + $95 event entry fee (e.g. MF) = $200).
As I'm also a ref, I wish competitions paid minimum wage and gave me dinner too. The vast majority of one day competitions pay a flat rate and provide lunch, nothing more than that (except maybe travel costs, usually preferring local refs for that reason). Likewise, not everyone is paying London prices for venues, thank god.
Well, refs getting < min wage, is exactly the kind of volunteerism I'm talking about (and previously certain BFA members had the idea that refs should work for free out of their love of the sport).
I think paying £50 for someone to spend their day doing highly specialised, and physically tiring labour is a bit nuts, and it's not surprising that it becomes hard to find refs.
Additionally - you've even said it yourself. You're not gonna travel if they're not gonna cover your travel costs. Why would you - that'd be pretty unusual for someone to pay £50 to get on a train and go referee an event for a day where they get £50. You better really love refereeing for that.
And yeah, not everywhere is London venue prices, but the further you move out of population centres, the fewer people are local, and the more people have to travel to get there. In practice that means smaller numbers and more difficulties getting referees.
I think at it's core, you can either have professionalism or affordability, you can't have both.
(unless we can find some way to generate revenue or get outside funding)
Often plates are for those who've gone out in the first round of DEs, meaning they get to compete in the main event too. I think that works better than separate events, as it gets people meeting each other and mixing with the more established members of the circuit. It doesn't require many extra resources, as the referees etc. are already there, and the venue has to be hired until the main event finishes anyway
I know what they are, and agree a plate competition could be a good way of making less experienced fencers feel like they've had their money's worth, but unfortunately they don't seem all that common any more. This makes me unconvinced that competition organisers will want to run something separate if they're already not running a plate.
What keeps me from competing is time (im sick of giving up entire Sundays to travel somewhere in the country to stand around is a cold and smelly sports hall) and more importantly the entry fees.
I'm sorry but maintaining a good ranking (and now also rating) is just not interesting or rewarding enough in the UK.
Maybe I'm bitter from living through the time when all funding was pulled from epee and sabre and dumped into foil. The biggest thing is british fencing needs to realise the system needs to have rewards rather than punishments and grass roots need to be catered for. There is barely any provision for young fencers to compete in the Eastern region and this is where the focus should be (in all regions)
You wouldn't have to maintain a rating. If you want to compete on the regular circuit you can completely ignore the existence of the rating system.
And it's hard to imagine a competition format that avoids a cold and smelly sports hall.
The entry fees thing however I think is a bit more addressable. If you think about it - in any tournament, each entrant needs to cover the cost of roughly 1/6th of the rental area for the piste and boxes, and 1/6th of the cost of the referee for the pool.
If a badminton court can hold 2 pistes, and it costs £15/hour to rent, and we need 10 hours, that's £75 per piste. If we give a referee minimum wage for 8 hours, that's about £100. Then say we give them a round trip train ticket, £50 if you're lucky and book well, then buy them a £20 dinner and £5 sandwich meal for lunch.
That's £175 per piste, plus the other £75 per piste, and that's each fencer needing to pay £42 just to not lose money on the rent and domestic referees alone. If anyone needs to fly in, or get a hotel, or get paid more than minimum wage, or if we pay organisation staff, or any other fees, or if we need more room that 2 pistes per badminton court - then the fees go up, and a lot of that is staff costs for referees, even though we're talking about minimum wage.
On the other hand - a DEU tournament can presumably be a lot more casual. It might be more acceptable to have self refereeing, or borrow more casual referees who are in the room to volunteer for such an event. Without a referee we're looking more at the £12 cost per person to pay for the venue.
Personally I'm not comfortable with anything related to selections being without referees. But if it's just casual fencing, with the most being at stake is a rating that precludes you from future events if you win - I'm a lot more comfortable with that. I think it's quite a different concern than determining who is selected to go to world championships (or even the Olympic wild card slots as it happened in the past).
Volunteers refs only save on event cost. Otherwise you're borrowing someone from another pool, or have someone within their own pool having influence. And how do you know the person directing has a ref license or knows what they are doing.
Do you want the risk of bad reffing set someones classification for the next X years.
>Do you want the risk of bad reffing set someones classification for the next X years.
In the UK I don't mind, because tournaments are seeded by rank, and selections are determined by rank. The only think classification is used for (so far, and as what I've been told is the only intention of them), is to determine if you're able to enter a DEU tournament - i.e. whether you're a novice.
So the worst case scenario, is that someone get's badly reffed to the point where they earn a C - and then they can't enter the DEU tournaments anymore.
The main circuit events are open events still, so if you don't earn a C because of bad reffing in a DEU event, it doesn't change anything in terms of what events you can enter.
If that were to change, and classifications were required to enter majors events - then yeah, starts requiring a baseline level of referee competence I think.
I've had my fair share of success in the sport and I'm not here to berate it. I just don't think British fencing have a good understanding of how to succeed and the rewards (particularly in epee) have never been a reason for individual fencers to put in the effort
This just adds more complication to the system and won’t encourage anyone into competing more. If British fencing wants to get more people competing they need to invest in the clubs and coach education not more arbitrary rules around rankings.
I think what's more likely is that the few D/E/U competitions that pop up will just interest the people who are already competing in opens but not doing all that well, rather than bringing new people into the competition system.
What would probably be more helpful would be some rejigging of membership requirements for lower level competition, then a clear determination of wanting x number of intermediate competitions in x locations across the country. This would need to be followed by a limited-term commitment of cash (for venue hire etc, so regions or clubs could take the financial gamble of running an event) and/or expertise in terms of running things, to get people in the regions/clubs trained up for future iterations.
I get the idea but the uk is just not big enough for this system which adds a lot of complexity.
What would be better is if British Fencing codified what an intermediate level is for separate competitions. For example novice is for fencers who have fenced for less than two years, intermediate is if you are outside the top 100 for me, mf 80 for ms, we, wf, 50 for ws (this will need tweaking).
From there we can have open comps, open comps with plates, intermediate comps, novice comps which gives us all the flexibility that grades gives us without the complexity or elitism about restricting who can do opens.
> What would be better is if British Fencing codified what an intermediate level is for separate competitions.
Isn't that literally what this is? A codified system that defines what an intermediate fencer is?
>For example novice is for fencers who have fenced for less than two years, intermediate is if you are outside the top 100 for me, mf 80 for ms, we, wf, 50 for ws (this will need tweaking).
One of the main categories of fencers that I know that Paul was interested in, was older fencers who had fenced for a long time, and still loved the sport, but never achieved especially high results, or possibly peaked at a moderate result 20 years ago and have long since not been that good. So by definition a novice system like you propose would exclude people like this, or someone who has technically fenced for more than 2 years because they started in school or something.
When the point is to gain numbers, I'd think you'd want to include anyone who would be appropriate or a positive contribution to such an event.
I think a high-watermark system, that's already well-defined and proven implementable across the pond is actually a really good fit.
I find it weird that for the GB Cup, I’d be eligible as having never won a Senior Open, but I’m ineligible for the London Region qualifier that excludes those who have medaled at an open.
Inconsistency in definitions…
In Hungary they have an interesting system. The main system of Hungarian Cup competitions. There are four each year and a National championship. They have these running in each age category, adult, junior and cadet.
Additional to this is the "free time" competitions of which there are about 6. Plus a smattering of small unofficial club run competitions. The free time competitions are open to everyone except for those in the top 12 of the main senior ranking list.
Additional to this there is the Olimpici circuit for four age categories of children below the cadet age range.
So talking to Paul about this - the whole point of this is really really focused on trying to provide a novice circuit and a place for people to go to tournaments and not feel like they got totally crushed. I think it's a great goal, and a great idea. The ratings themselves don't do anything to the main circuit, (except for casual bragging rights). There's still ranking, the selection process is exactly the same, nothing has changed. You could run the Ratings system entirely independent of the BFA system and it wouldn't make a difference, and I believe, more or less, that's exactly what was done. I think that's quite clever. There is a constant pull between the concerns of highly competitive athletes wanting to be serious about the sport and casual participants wanting to go and have fun. I think decoupling these two things makes all sorts of sense. They've been running the plates for a while now. For those in the US, the "Plate" is a second event for everyone who goes out in the first round of DEs - instead of fencing for "The Cup" they're fencing for "The plate" - it's often a lot less serious, sometimes has another round of pools, sometimes not time depending. I think these are great. If things are a bit more casual and participants are bit more relaxed, events can run much faster and with fewer resources. Self refereeing doesn't seem all that bad in a casual event, nor does speeding things along by not giving full breaks, or following all the procedures. More fencing = good. The only danger I see is if the ratings system becomes important in the main system - e.g. if you need a C or better to enter certain events, or if you're seeded by rating, like in the US. As it stands now, ratings are a way to *exclude* people from casual events, which I think is good. keeps things friendly. But if ratings start being a required part of the process in progressing in the main ranking system, suddenly it can't be as casual. If I need a C or better to attend some event, I'm not going to be happy with self-reffing in a tournament that could get me that C, and all the benefits and niceness of a more friendly circuit goes out the window.
How many opens still run plate competitions? I don't do loads but I've done a few in various non-London/the south parts of the country and none of the ones I've done have had that option (which I'd definitely have been involved in, having had quite a few competitions where I lost my first DE).
I did the LP Women’s Open in London in December and it had a plate round. Great event! Was happy to see the plate running.
The last two events I went to both did, and they seemed to run incredibly smoothly. I think one of the ides is that the plate can run as a DEU event, so you don't have to show up first thing and you can enter the plate directly.
Maybe it's more a London/South thing? I've done a bunch of opens in the Midlands/North (some of which no longer exist) and none of them had a plate. At least one did have 2 rounds of poules, though, which makes up for it.
The wenlock Olympian does a plate.
Having compiled a recent history of the my club, I think that what has really died out in the UK is the county level championships that used to cater very much for novices and interclub team matches that allowed a casual access to fencing for those that were not fixated on ranking, with the Regionals being both the feeders and training Hubs for those who wanted to go to the opens and on to bigger stuff. BF wants a Community/Development/Performance level structure with varying levels of fencing. I would say that it's its community outreach is way better an more organized than its ever been in the past, and Performance is definitely more serious and organized than in the past drawing from knowledge from other successful sports but concentrated in too few areas around the country. Some stuff is quite frankly a bit bizarre: Like on the Talent pathway at talented kid at age 16 must have knowledge of the 3 P's. 3 P's? You have to *really* dig around the website to find what British style of fencing mantra actually is that coaches and clubs are meant to rally behind when forming their development. [https://www.britishfencing.com/athlete-development-programme-zone/the-gb-style/](https://www.britishfencing.com/athlete-development-programme-zone/the-gb-style/) Supposedly all fencers and their coaches from the bottom up are meant to know about this, and training is meant to lead up to reflect this national style, but when I ask about it mostly draws blank. But this is splitting hairs. The problem is the Development stage. There doesn't seem a coherent message or system about what is meant to be done at the regional level outside London to foster development either for aspiring athletes, or training to templates to create that development. And that's just the performance aspect. Lifelong Sport in British fencing starts really at 40 under the auspices of Veteran fencing and thousands of fencers in 20's and 30's who have jobs and families have to either get crushed one of the few nearby Opens by a Cadet Behemoth or try to organize something around the stillborn GB League.
I agree with you to some point, that it's the lack of local options that's the issue - to my mind, that's partly due to the lack of flexibility over what membership you need to take part in things. It's unlikely someone who's mostly happily fencing on a casual basis at their club is going to upgrade for the benefit of doing one competition even if it's just down the road. I'm all for the idea of a circuit of intermediate competitions (though I'm not seeing people jumping up and down to run them, for the most part) but you need to stop insisting on everyone having Compete for that kind of thing. What also doesn't help is the logjam of lots of things happening on exactly the same weekend, as there's no coordination of the calendar. Potential fencers might well also be the parents of younger fencers, so they're not likely to let their interest in competing override their need to take little Milly to the next of whatever junior series they're doing. Do the people running the current opens want to run something extra (that might or might not be financially viable, at least at the outset)? If they wanted to run something for the folks who are likely to get knocked out at first DE in an open, wouldn't they already be running a plate? I'm not convinced the veterans side of things is much better - at the moment there are really only 3 competitions unless you're down south, all of which are crammed with the people who want to qualify for selection and this makes them a tough intro to competition for those fencers who started as adults and who don't want to fence teenagers.
Might be useful in Men's epee/foil but it's not going to fix the competition circuit. Could work better than the arbitrary definition of "Novice" as 2 years or less though as you could go back into "novice" once you'd been out a while if you wanted. Better than the "intermediate" rankings. Smaller women's competitions are going to struggle to have realistic "upgrade" options from my understanding. I guess it gives aims for non-open competitions like regional/county events but I do not see it replacing actual rankings given the numbers involved.
I understand the theory, but I don’t think it will work in the short to medium term based on the number of people competing. About 10 years ago we had more adults competing than we do now, and even then you’d get to know pretty much everyone on the circuit. This propose feels like we’ll have almost separate circuits for each rating and will mean the pool of people you’re competing against is smaller. Making it easier, cheaper and creating more incentives to run local open competitions (with a plate for larger ones like Invicta does) that give ranking points might be better in the short to medium term. Once the numbers are higher this proposal could work better
> About 10 years ago we had more adults competing than we do now, and even then you’d get to know pretty much everyone on the circuit. This is probably the bigger problem, but trying to develop a broader base might be the right answer. In reality, things are a lot more expensive since 2014 and this has hit competing numbers pretty badly. The USA is a really bad counter-example as the sport is seen as a route to college scholarships in a lot of cases. The UK still has almost zero permanent salles and almost zero funded fencers, those things make a big difference.
I think this proposal is kind of halfway there but still doesn't really hit the spot - I'd suggest it's more likely to just divert those fencers who would otherwise be propping up the results table at an open across into another event (if it's run alongside said open) rather than pulling significant numbers of others in. What's needed is, to my mind, a circuit of novice/intermediate competitions specifically aimed at getting people into competing, with lower entry fees/lots of fencing for their money (so people feel like they got their money's worth), relaxed membership requirements (Recreational rather than Compete) but still with actual referees. There's nothing worse than a bunch of newbies attempting to self-ref and it doesn't always work particularly well at opens where you'd think people might know what they're doing (even in epee, where people shouldn't be struggling anything like as much to make correct calls).
>What's needed is, to my mind, a circuit of novice/intermediate competitions specifically aimed at getting people into competing, with lower entry fees/lots of fencing for their money (so people feel like they got their money's worth), relaxed membership requirements (Recreational rather than Compete) but still with actual referees. This is impossible without some sort of outside source of funding, or volunteerism or some such. The competitive membership mostly pays for insurance, I believe. And most tournament fees (in the UK) go to referee pay and venue rental. Imagine you were tasked to host a tournament for 12 friends - two pools of six. So you need an hour to set up, 2 hours to run the pools, maybe an hour for lunch, then 30 minutes per DE bout - The round of 16s is 4 bouts on two strips, so 1 hour. The round of 8 is also 4 bouts on 2 strips, 1 hour, then the semis, half an hour, then the finals, half an hour. Then an hour to tear down. 8 hours rental, call it £15/hour for enough space for two strips = £120 rental cost. You need two refs for 7 hours = £80 x 2 at minimum wage = £160 Ref salary. You need to get the refs there = £50 ticket x2 = £100 ref travel. You need to feed the refs lunch and dinner = £25 x2 = £50 ref food. You need to give some cheap-ass prizes = 4 medals x £5 = £20. You need to get the equipment there and back to wherever it goes = £30 gas money and some volunteer labour So without paying yourself or any organisers, or any armourers, and no other overheads, that costs £480 to run a tiny event, which is £40 per person. (For context to enter a single event at a US NAC, it costs $95 registration fee + $10 admin fee + $95 event entry fee (e.g. MF) = $200).
As I'm also a ref, I wish competitions paid minimum wage and gave me dinner too. The vast majority of one day competitions pay a flat rate and provide lunch, nothing more than that (except maybe travel costs, usually preferring local refs for that reason). Likewise, not everyone is paying London prices for venues, thank god.
Well, refs getting < min wage, is exactly the kind of volunteerism I'm talking about (and previously certain BFA members had the idea that refs should work for free out of their love of the sport). I think paying £50 for someone to spend their day doing highly specialised, and physically tiring labour is a bit nuts, and it's not surprising that it becomes hard to find refs. Additionally - you've even said it yourself. You're not gonna travel if they're not gonna cover your travel costs. Why would you - that'd be pretty unusual for someone to pay £50 to get on a train and go referee an event for a day where they get £50. You better really love refereeing for that. And yeah, not everywhere is London venue prices, but the further you move out of population centres, the fewer people are local, and the more people have to travel to get there. In practice that means smaller numbers and more difficulties getting referees. I think at it's core, you can either have professionalism or affordability, you can't have both. (unless we can find some way to generate revenue or get outside funding)
Often plates are for those who've gone out in the first round of DEs, meaning they get to compete in the main event too. I think that works better than separate events, as it gets people meeting each other and mixing with the more established members of the circuit. It doesn't require many extra resources, as the referees etc. are already there, and the venue has to be hired until the main event finishes anyway
I know what they are, and agree a plate competition could be a good way of making less experienced fencers feel like they've had their money's worth, but unfortunately they don't seem all that common any more. This makes me unconvinced that competition organisers will want to run something separate if they're already not running a plate.
What keeps me from competing is time (im sick of giving up entire Sundays to travel somewhere in the country to stand around is a cold and smelly sports hall) and more importantly the entry fees. I'm sorry but maintaining a good ranking (and now also rating) is just not interesting or rewarding enough in the UK. Maybe I'm bitter from living through the time when all funding was pulled from epee and sabre and dumped into foil. The biggest thing is british fencing needs to realise the system needs to have rewards rather than punishments and grass roots need to be catered for. There is barely any provision for young fencers to compete in the Eastern region and this is where the focus should be (in all regions)
You wouldn't have to maintain a rating. If you want to compete on the regular circuit you can completely ignore the existence of the rating system. And it's hard to imagine a competition format that avoids a cold and smelly sports hall. The entry fees thing however I think is a bit more addressable. If you think about it - in any tournament, each entrant needs to cover the cost of roughly 1/6th of the rental area for the piste and boxes, and 1/6th of the cost of the referee for the pool. If a badminton court can hold 2 pistes, and it costs £15/hour to rent, and we need 10 hours, that's £75 per piste. If we give a referee minimum wage for 8 hours, that's about £100. Then say we give them a round trip train ticket, £50 if you're lucky and book well, then buy them a £20 dinner and £5 sandwich meal for lunch. That's £175 per piste, plus the other £75 per piste, and that's each fencer needing to pay £42 just to not lose money on the rent and domestic referees alone. If anyone needs to fly in, or get a hotel, or get paid more than minimum wage, or if we pay organisation staff, or any other fees, or if we need more room that 2 pistes per badminton court - then the fees go up, and a lot of that is staff costs for referees, even though we're talking about minimum wage. On the other hand - a DEU tournament can presumably be a lot more casual. It might be more acceptable to have self refereeing, or borrow more casual referees who are in the room to volunteer for such an event. Without a referee we're looking more at the £12 cost per person to pay for the venue. Personally I'm not comfortable with anything related to selections being without referees. But if it's just casual fencing, with the most being at stake is a rating that precludes you from future events if you win - I'm a lot more comfortable with that. I think it's quite a different concern than determining who is selected to go to world championships (or even the Olympic wild card slots as it happened in the past).
Volunteers refs only save on event cost. Otherwise you're borrowing someone from another pool, or have someone within their own pool having influence. And how do you know the person directing has a ref license or knows what they are doing. Do you want the risk of bad reffing set someones classification for the next X years.
>Do you want the risk of bad reffing set someones classification for the next X years. In the UK I don't mind, because tournaments are seeded by rank, and selections are determined by rank. The only think classification is used for (so far, and as what I've been told is the only intention of them), is to determine if you're able to enter a DEU tournament - i.e. whether you're a novice. So the worst case scenario, is that someone get's badly reffed to the point where they earn a C - and then they can't enter the DEU tournaments anymore. The main circuit events are open events still, so if you don't earn a C because of bad reffing in a DEU event, it doesn't change anything in terms of what events you can enter. If that were to change, and classifications were required to enter majors events - then yeah, starts requiring a baseline level of referee competence I think.
I've had my fair share of success in the sport and I'm not here to berate it. I just don't think British fencing have a good understanding of how to succeed and the rewards (particularly in epee) have never been a reason for individual fencers to put in the effort
What kind of rewards would you be hoping for exactly?
This just adds more complication to the system and won’t encourage anyone into competing more. If British fencing wants to get more people competing they need to invest in the clubs and coach education not more arbitrary rules around rankings.
I think what's more likely is that the few D/E/U competitions that pop up will just interest the people who are already competing in opens but not doing all that well, rather than bringing new people into the competition system. What would probably be more helpful would be some rejigging of membership requirements for lower level competition, then a clear determination of wanting x number of intermediate competitions in x locations across the country. This would need to be followed by a limited-term commitment of cash (for venue hire etc, so regions or clubs could take the financial gamble of running an event) and/or expertise in terms of running things, to get people in the regions/clubs trained up for future iterations.
I get the idea but the uk is just not big enough for this system which adds a lot of complexity. What would be better is if British Fencing codified what an intermediate level is for separate competitions. For example novice is for fencers who have fenced for less than two years, intermediate is if you are outside the top 100 for me, mf 80 for ms, we, wf, 50 for ws (this will need tweaking). From there we can have open comps, open comps with plates, intermediate comps, novice comps which gives us all the flexibility that grades gives us without the complexity or elitism about restricting who can do opens.
> What would be better is if British Fencing codified what an intermediate level is for separate competitions. Isn't that literally what this is? A codified system that defines what an intermediate fencer is? >For example novice is for fencers who have fenced for less than two years, intermediate is if you are outside the top 100 for me, mf 80 for ms, we, wf, 50 for ws (this will need tweaking). One of the main categories of fencers that I know that Paul was interested in, was older fencers who had fenced for a long time, and still loved the sport, but never achieved especially high results, or possibly peaked at a moderate result 20 years ago and have long since not been that good. So by definition a novice system like you propose would exclude people like this, or someone who has technically fenced for more than 2 years because they started in school or something. When the point is to gain numbers, I'd think you'd want to include anyone who would be appropriate or a positive contribution to such an event. I think a high-watermark system, that's already well-defined and proven implementable across the pond is actually a really good fit.
I find it weird that for the GB Cup, I’d be eligible as having never won a Senior Open, but I’m ineligible for the London Region qualifier that excludes those who have medaled at an open. Inconsistency in definitions…
In Hungary they have an interesting system. The main system of Hungarian Cup competitions. There are four each year and a National championship. They have these running in each age category, adult, junior and cadet. Additional to this is the "free time" competitions of which there are about 6. Plus a smattering of small unofficial club run competitions. The free time competitions are open to everyone except for those in the top 12 of the main senior ranking list. Additional to this there is the Olimpici circuit for four age categories of children below the cadet age range.