Division Four (South) 2017-18

[LawrenceCooper]

I notice on the 4ncl page that Div 4 South has a whopping 40 teams listed for the coming season! Is it time for a Div 5?

http://www.4ncl.co.uk/1819_teams.htm Close of play: 37 teams.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Lets put it this way I have no idea whether my opponent tomorrow is going to be about 170 or 120. As its a cup match & the only club not making nominations yet as their season is starting about 3 weeks later than other clubs."
Get the rule changed to "nominations must be made before ANY team plays a match".

[Kevin Thurlow]

Are more people playing 4NCL as local leagues are in many cases dying out?

[Roger de Coverly]

Are more people playing 4NCL as local leagues are in many cases dying out?

It's perhaps not a direct competitor as local leagues are in the evenings. Fewer counties are running county teams, so there's an effect there.

[David Pardoe]

maybe its time to draw a line on the UK map and say take teams from south of that line as the `south`..
the line could run roughly from Shrewsbury to Kings Lynn perhaps to see if the leagues could be better balanced..` North` and `South`.. ?

[NickFaulks]

maybe its time to draw a line on the UK map and say take teams from south of that line as the `south`..the line could run roughly from Shrewsbury to Kings Lynn perhaps to see if the leagues could be better balanced..` North` and `South`.. ?

How do you define where a team comes from?

[Roger Lancaster]

It seems unavoidable that, even with a Swiss system, some total mismatches will occur unless pairings are done only after team compositions are known. Otherwise, take a squad with 2 teams and 24 nominated players. With the second team, in particular, the players could be as high as numbers 7 to 12 in the squad or as low as 19-24. One of those combinations is likely to be much, much stronger than the other.


Having said that, while understanding the organisers' decision to avoid Swiss pairings for the first 4 rounds last year, I hope they don't repeat this.

[Ian Thompson]

I notice on the 4ncl page that Div 4 South has a whopping 40 teams listed for the coming season! Is it time for a Div 5?

I think something needs to be done about the proportion of teams getting promoted to and relegated from each division. With more teams in lower divisions than higher ones the proportion getting promoted obviously goes down significantly - down to as little as 5% in Division 4, compared to 25% in Division 2.

I think it's time to have a single Division 1, and split all lower divisions into 2 or more sections. You could have:

1 x 12 team Division 1 (4 relegated)
2 x 12 team Division 2 (2 promoted from each; 2 relegated from each)
2 x 12 team Division 3 (2 promoted from each; 3 relegated from each)
3 x 12 team Division 4 (2 promoted from each)

As you're unlikely to get a multiple of 12 teams entering, you could make one or more Division 4 sections a swiss, or add a fourth section to it and increase the number of teams relegated from each Division 3 section from 3 to 4 teams.

I think the important thing is that a reasonable proportion of teams get promoted each season - 1 in 6 is OK; 1 in 20 isn't. The number getting relegated is less important.

[Nick Burrows]

That makes a lot of sense, but isn't the North/South divide a massively complicating factor in terms of Div 2 teams being relegated affecting available Div 4 promotion slots. Plus, where do the 6 teams promoted Div 4 teams go to, assuming that one of the 3rd divisions remains a Div 3 North?

[David Robertson]

A further, presumably unintended, consequence of Ian's proposal could be to diminish the national character of the 4NCL outside Div 1. For the majority of teams rarely able to win promotion to the top division, playing in a (presumed N/S) regional Div 2/3 structure would have limited appeal, I fear.

Moreover, as things stand currently, most of the top 12 in Div 1 are generally far stronger than all but one or two of the next 24 teams. So relegating 25% of them would dilute the strength of Div 1, and distort competition in the lower league(s) thereafter, to no one's benefit

[Alex Holowczak]

A further, presumably unintended, consequence of Ian's proposal could be to diminish the national character of the 4NCL outside Div 1. For the majority of teams rarely able to win promotion to the top division, playing in a (presumed N/S) regional Div 2/3 structure would have limited appeal, I fear.

Moreover, as things stand currently, most of the top 12 in Div 1 are generally far stronger than all but one or two of the next 24 teams. So relegating 25% of them would dilute the strength of Div 1, and distort competition in the lower league(s) thereafter, to no one's benefit

My impression - we did a small amount of analysis last year - was that Division 2 was actually a really competitive division, but Division 1 was actually quite one-sided by comparison. For example, 8-0 wasn't even in the top 3 most one-sided results in Division 1 last season, from memory.

I wonder, if you had Division 1, Division 2a and Division 2b with 12 teams in all three (and 2a and 2b were still national), whether that would remove your concern? Division 2 would grow to 24 teams. The 4 coming down and the 4 who would go up from Division 3 would change the balance of Division 2. I wonder if a 12-team Division 1 would help to increase the competitive balance in it, and Division 2 would probably be OK if you went down a 2a/b route with 12 teams in each. If that was too confusing, I suppose you could just go Div 1/2/3, like the old days. 2/3 would be more competitive than 2a/b.

But these are really just thought experiments, I haven't looked into the detail of that at all. Bedrooms and playing space need to be considered too; you'd need to fit an extra two matches in, which is non-trivial in somewhere like Telford.

[Mick Norris]

I think you'd get issues (by which I mean, complaints) allocating teams to 2a or 2b; as far as playing space is concerned, presumably 2a and 2b wouldn't necessarily need to be at the same location every time?

[Alex Holowczak]

I think you'd get issues (by which I mean, complaints) allocating teams to 2a or 2b; as far as playing space is concerned, presumably 2a and 2b wouldn't necessarily need to be at the same location every time?

Why would the 2a/b complaints be any different from the ones we get now? Insofar as we ever seem to get any.

[Roger de Coverly]

Why would the 2a/b complaints be any different from the ones we get now? Insofar as we ever seem to get any.

It's not infrequent with the current allocations to the first 7 rounds as 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, that the top and perhaps bottom 4 all come from the same section, thus suggesting the initial seeding was imbalanced. If it's only 2 promotions and 2 relegations per sub section, you don't want the top 4 or even bottom 4 teams all in the same section.

The top of the first division is extremely predictable, below that rather less so.

Am I right in thinking that in the pairing scheme used in the Olympiad, after the first or maybe the second round, the ratings of the players aren't used and it's past performance that's used as ranking factors?

For division 4, it's now large enough that using the Olympiad pairing scheme should work. I wouldn't think it would be so much of a problem if the pairings were only known for Sunday matches after completion of the Saturday ones.

[Alex Holowczak]

Am I right in thinking that in the pairing scheme used in the Olympiad, after the first or maybe the second round, the ratings of the players aren't used and it's past performance that's used as ranking factors?

For division 4, it's now large enough that using the Olympiad pairing scheme should work. I wouldn't think it would be so much of a problem if the pairings were only known for Sunday matches after completion of the Saturday ones.

It sorts by matchpoints, then each matchpoint scoregroup is re-sorted by gamepoints. That's exactly what the 4NCL does, except it then sorts each gamepoint scoregroup by the average rating of the team in the previous round, for some reason I never understood. Finally, in both cases, it sorts by their initial seed.

The main issues with why this precise pairing system wouldn't work in the 4NCL are:
1. The fixation with pairing both rounds of a weekend together; or at the very least, the desire to guarantee a 1-1 colour split on each weekend; and
2. Triangular matches.