English Chess Forum

The National Club Championships seem poorly utilised, so why doesn't the format change so that each affiliated league submit a division 1 champion team (or the top 2/3 teams) to a regional championship (SCCU, MCCU, etc) knockout which in turn goes to a national finals event (A Champion of Champions Final)?

The ECF could get a big sponsor (one of the honoury life members who has a lot of money maybe) to support the biggest National Event since the launch of the 4NCL.

Who is actually in charge of marketing now?

In other sports, a common format is the classic pyramid of county leagues feeding into national leagues with a Premiership at the top. This would be difficult to implement due to the enormous change required to current systems (and the autonomy of the 4NCL seperates it from county league chess).

The obvious solution would be to revamp the NCC so that the top teams from each league are nominated into regional finals, etc, etc. This is obviously running on similar lines to the current county game, where the counties battle it out against each other and the then the top counties of one region play that of another until they meet in a county final.

In someways, I could envisage where you have a Mega Chess Final day where the top county finalists play each other and the top club finals happen at the same time and place. This would be great opportunity for publicity and sponsorship.

One possible snag is if you have the top county and a major feeder team for that county playing reaching the final at the same time (i.e. worse case scenario: Essex v Kent and Wanstead (Essex) v Maidstone (Kent) and both teams field several players who could feature in the both finals).

If you changed the format to what I proposed, then you could almost guarantee greater interest. My own club would not be involved as we currently lie in 2nd division paradise!

Knockout zones could ruin it for some teams though, because say if two teams good enough to win the whole tournament are in the same county, only one of them can compete in the proper finals.

This might cause a loss of interest in some clubs, as I'm sure most clubs would prefer to play as many different clubs from as many different counties as they can, instead of teams they've played against for the last decade in their league division.

The easiest and probably best way to revamp the National Club Championship is to discontinue it. When I first played in it for my school over 50 years ago, it was a wonderful event. I have twice been a member of the winning team and reached the last stages many times. It has passed it sell-by date and has reached its bye-bye date.
Life moves on an so should the ECF.
The person in charge of marketing is Peter Wilson. But trying to raise money for that event would be a waste of energy and resources when you consider that both the British Championships and Hastings need sponsors and yet are still currently flourishing events.
Stewart Reuben