36-6. This week's netball

The girls are so gracious in victory, "Man, we dicked them!". I feel obliged to counsel "Don't say that! Until they're out of earshot."

The score might say it all. Although truly, the team that succumbed this week was 2nd in the table. But didn't I say last week that M's team were 2nd? I can't remember, although it is true.

For some inexplicable reason, despite there being enough games in the season to do this, the tournament does not run by having each team play each other twice, and then ranking the table according to wins & points.

Apparently that would be unfair for the teams who are... useless. They may be demoralised & never play again. Hooey.

What they do is: At the beginning of the season each coach is asked "Is your team any good? Or not?". I'm not sure even, how they're supposed to know if thay're any good at the beginning of the year...

So they split the A grade into A1 & A2. Then they play 3 "grading games" within the two A grades.

At the end of the 3 games, the top two from A2 switch places with the bottom 2 from A1.

And so this weekend we played the top team from A2, who came up with an unbeaten record & a truck load of points - they'd won by considerable margins. And we crushed them.

Paradoxically, one of the teams that was relegated, and which we beat by a narrower margin - 33-15 or something, it's on this site somewhere, crushed their opponents too.

Now what will happen is that there will be all sorts of dicking around with the draw & the same handful of teams will play each other over & over to make it fair on everyone else. Possibly they will rejig A1 & A2 further.

Just ridiculous. Out of interest, do any other kids tournaments do it in this fashion? Or is it more usual to to play the whole field against each other once or twice & tally up the points?

Maybe I'm the one with the ridiculous notions...

UPDATE: M's rep team came 2nd in their tournament yesterday. They won 5 out of 6 games - beat one club's A team but lost to their B team, indicating that with a little more discipline, total victory was within their grasp! Good start to the rep season though.