National Club Championship - reform needed?

[Andrew Zigmond]

There has been some debate recently about the County Championships. I thought this might be a good time to raise the subject of the ECF's other flagship team event; the National Club Championship.

This season I decided to test the water by entering a Harrogate team in this event. I chose the minor section as the competition in which I could attract the most interest. Six teams entered in all so the controller placed us in pools of three to create a mini all play all with the winners competing for the title.

There were considerable distances involved from the outset making neutral venues necessary (finding a venue is hard enough sometimes when you have local knowledge). To be fair it is stated in the rules that distances are involved and teams need to be prepared for this.

The entry to the event was over £20 so not cheap. On top of that the clubs had pay for venue hire and transport costs which made for a rather expensive game of chess. Obviously there is a monetary prize involved which the entry fee supports but other costs make this sum relatively uninportant.

How could participation be increased? What could be done differently? This is no disrespect to the organisers of the event who do a sterling job but there must be an opportunity here.

[Alex Holowczak]

As an aside, it should be noted that I intend to publish questionnaires on the ECF website about both the Counties and the National Club Championship on the ECF website fairly soon, in a bid to answer these sort of questions. This thread has somewhat stole my thunder.

[Alan Walton]

One competition could be run on a Champions League basis

A competition set over a weekend or two (in similar venues as the 4NCL), where only the champions of the local leagues are eligible to enter

The first weekend could be run as a Swiss style tournament (4 rounds), where the top 8 clubs from the Swiss then move into the second Weekend where there is a knockout system (every team playing three matches, so you place 1-8), you could even take the 9-16 placed teams in the Swiss into the Plate competition

Obviously you may have some rules around eligibility of players, say must have played for the club in the local league in the qualifying season

It is different from what's been run in the past but maybe an interesting way forward