Uk uni hockey league - thoughts.

SWUM are hosting a hockey afternnon on Jan 6th 2007 At Riverside leisure centre in Exeter. Would people be interested in this being the start of a Uk unicycle hockey league?
In teh past IIRC teh Uk league was run on a tornament basis- so every game your team plays in a tornament is worth points and the team with most points at teh end of teh year are league winners. obviously this means those teams commited and traveling to play more games have a better chance of winning…

for example

  • jan torny- D & E don;t play as they can’t get teams together to travel.
    A v B - A win 3 points
    B v C B win 3points
    C v A draw 1 point each

A= 4 B = 3 C= 1

Feb tourny, A don;t go coz its too far away.

B v D B win 3 points
Dv E E win 3 points
C v B draw I point each
C v E E win 3 points

A=3 B =7 C= 2 D = 0 E = 6

and so on through the year.
A possiblility is also to award 1 point for each tourny played in, so a team who travel to lots but keep getting beat do still get some points rewarding them more than a team who never travel but won one game at their local tourny.

I’d be interested to read any other ideas on how such a league could run particulary with regard to points.
As a rough guess teams from- Calstock, SWUM, Bristol, oxford? southhampton? London,Horsham, Brum, Manchester, derby, Stockton and richmond might be involved. If there is a major biais to the south in the number of tourneys them BUC could possiblly be 2 tourneys , 1 the BUC championship one and a 2nd late nigt one for league teams who want to get more games in. With both counting for league points.

Your thoughts please.
Sarah Miller

I like the idea of a league though I haven’t given the logistics, scoring etc. much thought but some nice suggestions there to get the ball rolling, so to speak :slight_smile:

The current format of Manchester hockey tournaments and the EMU ones (next one, Winter Warmer, 20th January 2007) is of complete scratch teams, spreading the players out to have even(ish) teams. My initial thoughts if league games were to be played at these tournaments is that less experienced players may actually get more time on the ball. At the last 2 Manchester tournaments I’ve been to a beginners(ish) game has been played at the start which worked well in this respect.

So a tournaments format could consist of league teams playing each other and scratch non-league teams playing each other. Also, depending on numbers etc. some fun mixed team games as well. Just an thought.

As for SWUM on the 6th January 2007, I’m on holiday so I won’t be there :frowning:

A UK League sounds like a great idea, can I suggest the following changes ( the numbers that I’ve used are just guesses and could be changed)

  1. Every team that wants to enter nominates a roster of say up to 10 players - they can’t play for any other named team but would be able to play in a scratch team. At a particular tournament it would seem to make sense to be able to only play for one team either your named team or your scratch team.

  2. Every team must commit to organising at least one tournament during the year.

  3. To help with travelling can we have something that to count in the final league a team must enter at least 5 tournaments, and they can pick their best say 10 tournament results at the end of the year. In the event of a tie we could use the BUC as the decider or something like that.

  4. Rather than points for each match perhaps the each tournament should be a league and then points awarded based on position in the tournament league and number of teams in the league so you’d get more points for winning a well attended tournament than a less well attended one. This would allow for guest scratch teams to play in a given tournament without messing up results too much but also give them something to play for.

Its practise tonight for us so I’ll canvas the rest of the EMU’s and see what feedback ideas they have as some of them don’t visit here too often

Lets hope it happens

Roland

Would this mean a big fight between the EMUs, the LUNIs and the Hackney Hokey Cokeys over custardy of me? :smiley:

STM

Do you want me to answer that? :stuck_out_tongue:

I can imagine you’re all too polite to fight anyway.

“It’s ok, you have him”
“No, it’s fine, you take him”
“Really, it’s ok, he’s all yours”

STM

We’re on the verge of a breakthrough here in Southampton, I’ve almost (after 2 months of organisation) got us a slot in the university sports hall for a weekly practice. I think it makes us the worlds first University Unicycle Hockey Team? I’m going to e-mail Rocket and see if he knows about clubs on the continent who might be associated with universities.

It also means we will be able to hold a tournament here very easily, with a full-size indoor pitch and world class facilities. Now we just need to hope we’re too far away for anyone to bother and it’ll just be us and SWUM battling for points :P.

Loose.

Hopeing to scratch something together next term, short on players and somewhere to ride at the moment but who knows. Trouble is during term time no-one in Oxford has transport so getting to tournaments may well be tricky, but Im sure we can get to some of them. I’m not really fussed about points, but it might give our club some direction and focus.

I’d like (for totally selfish reasons) to see a system that didn’t totally disadvantage people who didn’t have access to a regular team.

Far from I’m afraid. Bristol Uni was the hockey team Paul and i played for at teh 1st BUC back in 1992 . A number of the German teams are university connected and use their sumptuous german sports facilities for weekly practise and conventions.

Yo i will volunteer to try and get in the south west team if i can please judging on my swum performance i may b a good bench warmer or left back… in the changing rooms

I can’t find any information regarding the (pre-internet :p) Bristol Club, but I can’t imagine, at least back then, it being part of the Athletics Union. Hopefully, (long term plans) part of our use of facilities and being a valid sports club, we may at the end of the year become an AU club at southampton, thus we will be officially be representing the University in competition (and get funding to do so).

Loose.

Love your work.

I know it’s far off and expensive and a silly idea but with the growth of ‘the sport’ (how cute a way was that to get around the spelling-issue?) in SA (we’ve added a new team’s worth of players in the past 3 months), we’re itching for some international exposure/competition/oodle-of-fun.
We have a great rink and can arrange home-stays. So if your uni-uni team is in need of a road-trip…

Loosemoose, I’m pretty sure there used to be a unicycle hockey team at the University of Surrey in Guildford. On the list of clubs and societies in their prospectus unicycle hockey is listed, but I’m guessing the team doesn’t exist anymore because I can’t find anything on the internet about it, and also because I’m sure someone here would know if they were still around.

I’m up for a league. I like the idea of mixing it up with scratch teams to make sure as many people as possible can get a game. When the old league was running most tournaments would have one or two scratch teams. There would often be couple teams who could only muster three or four players (especially for a ‘b’ team) and would need some extra on the day. I agree with Roland about playing for nominated teams but we’ll need a bit of flexibility and maybe a transfer window for people who move.

Maybe we could have a scratch league as well… I’m thinking about this as I type so bear with me… Every player who plays in a scratch team gets that team’s points than at the end of the season you could have a scratch champion. It should be possible to have a scratch team at every tournament so as to let everbody who wants to get a game

I’m sure Bristol can get a team together for January

Loose: there are a couple of uni clubs listed here (including bristol) if you want to carry on your research: http://www.mpch-mainz.mpg.de/~sander/uni/teamlist.html. The team I played on in for the 1st european championship (in 1993) were all members of the Southampton University Juggling Club. We had some university funding for equipment but weren’t a AU team

I’m in. Thanks for getting the ball rolling Sarah.

Need to get a Cambridge team together…

Paul

Thanks for the input peeps. I’ll give some more thought to points alacation over the next few days. Also like the idea that each team should organise a round of games. That would mean every team got a “home” game. The scratch games equal personal points idea… need to think about that one, sound slike a LOT of admin to kep it working right.

All of us at Calstock Uni club are practising hard!

Sounds good, Sarah.

I’m sure a few of us at Stockton could put a team together.

A UK league would be great!

Joe,

So is this definitley going to be the first fixture of the league? The EMU’s are definitely up for the league but as its a 9hr round trip for us to Exeter (and I know others have longer journeys :slight_smile: ) and I’ll struggle to convince people its a good idea if it isn’t a league fixture. With team composition, we’re interested in having two teams although probably not at every tournament obviously depending on player availability so what what the rules be for players playing for an ‘A’ team or a ‘B’ team?

Nick’s point that a player should be able to play for a different team seems very reasonable if they move areas but I can’t imagine too many other reasons that a player would change teams during the courrs of the season.

And hopefully for anyone without a team worrying about not getting to play, I would hope that scratch teams will be able to enter tournaments and I would also hope that there will still be a good number of completely scratch tournaments throughout the year - the EMU’s will definitely still be doing one or two scratch tournaments to encourage new players - the Winter warmer EMU Winter warmer on the 20th January being a fine example of this (sorry for the shameless plug)

Roland