2013 Final Stage

[Angus French]

I feel that recent agendas have been too long and haven't allowed for sufficient discussion of various items. In my view, this risks bad decision making.)

Which items would you recommended were omitted from the agendas?

John, my point was a general one. I'm not going to pick individual items. Deferral should in most cases be prefered over omission. Some items have to be discussed.
Perhaps an extra meeting would have been a good idea.

[John Philpott]

John Upham wrote:

Which items would you recommended were omitted from the agendas?

My own starting point would be the minutes of the previous meeting. If there is a genuine disagreement over the substance of the minutes, this should clearly be dealt with on the day, but all too often the first half hour of a meeting is wasted on drafting minutiae, and matters never quite get back on track.

[Tim Spanton]

World Cup: Fifa investigation puts Ethiopia progress in doubt
Ethiopia's progress to the final round of African World Cup qualifying is in doubt after Fifa opened disciplinary proceedings against them on Sunday.

Earlier in the day, the East Africans beat South Africa 2-1 in Addis Ababa to seemingly reach the African play-offs.

However, they now face accusations they fielded an ineligible player in the 2-1 win over Botswana on 8 June.
Fifa rules state any team found guilty of that offence "will be sanctioned by forfeiting the match".

Ethiopian Football Federation president Sehilu Gebremariam is still confident his side can progress.

"This is shocking news - but the point is that we are still leading the group, we believe that we shall still qualify for the next stage," he told the BBC's Newsday programme.

"We are scrutinizing the situation and we will give information to Fifa and to the public."

He said they would be consulting the coaching staff to get their views on the situation before reacting further.

Football's world governing body is also investigating Togo and Equatorial Guinea for the same reason.

A guilty verdict against all the sides would have serious ramifications in three of the qualifying groups for next year's World Cup in Brazil.

Fifa rules on player ineligibility
Article 55 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code states:

•If a player takes part in an official match despite being ineligible, his team will be sanctioned by forfeiting the match and paying a minimum fine of CHF 6,000
The case against the Ethiopians is pressing, as a guilty verdict would hand a lifeline back to 2010 World Cup hosts South Africa.

Currently five points off the top of Group A, South Africa would only be two points behind if the Ethiopians have to forfeit their victory against Botswana - and receive a technical defeat instead.

The announcement of Fifa's probes will not only encourage South African football fans, but also those of Cameroon and Cape Verde.

Cameroon were beaten 2-0 by Togo on 9 June but the six-time World Cup qualifiers now stand to gain the three points should the Togolese be found guilty.

Such a scenario would move Cameroon, who currently trail Group I leaders Libya by two points, a point clear in the table.

The West Africans host Libya in what is both sides' final encounter in September.

Equatorial Guinea allegedly fielded an ineligible player in their 4-3 defeat of island nation Cape Verde in March.

Fifa says they recently ruled on that matter and that the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations co-hosts have appealed the decision.

Should island nation Cape Verde receive the points from a match they originally lost, the passage of Tunisia to the African play-offs would also be in question.

The Carthage Eagles drew 1-1 in Equatorial Guinea on Sunday to seemingly book their place, but a technical victory for Cape Verde would lift the islanders up to nine points - just two behind the North Africans.

Tunisia host Cape Verde on the final day of the current qualifying stage

[Alan Walton]

Here is another example of officials following the rules to the letter, though this time the common sense has prevailed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/22920080

[MartinCarpenter]

That apparent ammendment does seem very odd. Given how strictly the point defaulting is being applied, the only way in which the controller could be satisifed that someone was willfully playing an inelligible player would be if he decided that the captain was purposefully trying to lose the match.....

Hopefully not something you'd see often (and liable to punishment by his teammates!)

Giving some discretion about the board point penalties would of course make an awful lot of sense.

[Roger de Coverly]

Given how strictly the point defaulting is being applied, the only way in which the controller could be satisifed that someone was willfully playing an inelligible player would be if he decided that the captain was purposefully trying to lose the match...

The football cases mentioned above were almost all cases of disputed eligibility. Whilst once FIFA was quite relaxed about eligibilities, it now seems they have adopted parentage, birth and residency rules closer to those of notoriously stringent chess leagues like Birmingham and mid-Sussex.

No one has been defaulted in this year's competition for fielding a player not having a birth, residence or club qualification, but I wouldn't want to give the controller ideas.

The squad of GMs playing for Wood Green in the London League probably makes them theoretically eligible for Middlesex in the Counties Championship, but perhaps if Middlesex tried fielding a 4NCL based GM, they might hit that clause. There's precedent. In the days when the National Club and the 4NCL overlapped, the BCF started to object to players bussed in for the 4NCL also being used in the National Club.

[Mick Norris]

John Upham wrote:

Which items would you recommended were omitted from the agendas?

My own starting point would be the minutes of the previous meeting. If there is a genuine disagreement over the substance of the minutes, this should clearly be dealt with on the day, but all too often the first half hour of a meeting is wasted on drafting minutiae, and matters never quite get back on track.

Agreed

At Thursday's MCF AGM I will make the point that the minutes from last year have been available for months, no-one has objected to them, so let's just accept them and move on - on the bright side, at least we no longer have to have the previous minutes read out on the night

I think it is about good chairmanship, which in turn is about good preparation, and the ECF has been let down in this area (in my view, based on reports of recent meetings from our delegate and other attendees)

Drafting an AGM agenda, deciding which order to take items and whether to allow any other business, and handling the meeting are difficult skills

[PeterFarr]

That apparent ammendment does seem very odd. Given how strictly the point defaulting is being applied, the only way in which the controller could be satisifed that someone was willfully playing an inelligible player would be if he decided that the captain was purposefully trying to lose the match.....

Hopefully not something you'd see often (and liable to punishment by his teammates!)

Giving some discretion about the board point penalties would of course make an awful lot of sense.

Maybe its designed for things like playing someone under a false name - e.g. your opponent "John Smith" speaks with a Scandinavian accent, plays an insipid opening, and wins the endgame without you ever understanding where you went wrong.

I suppose there is some relative scale of wickedness related to ineligibility, which ought to have appropriately varying penalties e.g.

1) outright cheating as outlined above - team defaulted and captain consigned to outer darkness
2) playing an ineligible player that has no sensible way to become eligible (over-graded, or doesn't qualify by any of birth, residence etc.) - points deduction (?) - hmm can imagine lots of grey areas here
3) ineligible by administrative oversight (membership fees not paid) - slap on wrist / fine.

[PeterFarr]

The football cases mentioned above were almost all cases of disputed eligibility. Whilst once FIFA was quite relaxed about eligibilities, it now seems they have adopted parentage, birth and residency rules closer to those of notoriously stringent chess leagues like Birmingham and mid-Sussex.

Gosh, I've been playing in the Mid-Sussex for 27 years without realizing that we were notoriously stringent. How delightful.

Actually our eligibility criteria are:

1.Payment of a current season annual subscription to the club;

2.Having their main residence or place of work / education within the County of Sussex (East or West);

3.Having their main residence within 20 miles outside of the East / West Sussex county boundary;

4.Having played at least one full season in an internal club competition in the previous few years; i.e. played and completed the full schedule;

5.Having played at least 40% of matches for the club in two previous MSL seasons in the previous five years;

6.Birth in Sussex.

So in reality anyone who lives within the vicinity of Sussex can join a club and play in the league. You might object to the residency qualification, but if you consider that its an evening league covering an area as wide as Horsham to Hastings (55 miles) or Crowborough to Worthing (37 miles), its hard to see that this constitutes a real issue. Probably the 20 mile rule is there to stop some ghastly London-based GM mercenary from playing a couple of crucial games for somebody.

[Roger de Coverly]

Probably the 20 mile rule is there to stop some ghastly London-based GM mercenary from playing a couple of crucial games for somebody.

That's absolutely the reason. One of Britain's GMs went to university in Sussex and was prepared to play a match or two for one of the Sussex clubs, only later to be ruled ineligible. It may even have been a relatively recent development.

Google finds the reference
http://www.midsussexchess.org.uk/06_07/forum/forum.htm

Berks did briefly consider a similar rule but decided to leave things as they were, there being no particular desire to prevent participation.

[PeterFarr]

Probably the 20 mile rule is there to stop some ghastly London-based GM mercenary from playing a couple of crucial games for somebody.

That's absolutely the reason. One of Britain's GMs went to university in Sussex and was prepared to play a match or two for one of the Sussex clubs, only later to be ruled ineligible. It may even have been a relatively recent development.

Google finds the reference
http://www.midsussexchess.org.uk/06_07/forum/forum.htm

Berks did briefly consider a similar rule but decided to leave things as they were, there being no particular desire to prevent participation.

Blimey, great spot, you've got me bang to rights on that; I'd totally forgotten, even though I'd contributed to the thread. At least back then I pleaded the case for the evidently-not-at-all-ghastly-after-all London-based GM being allowed to play.

[Sean Hewitt]

The fact is that discussion of the proposed rules came at the end of the meeting and was rushed. (As an aside, and having attended the last four Council meetings, I feel that recent agendas have been too long and haven't allowed for sufficient discussion of various items. In my view, this risks bad decision making.)

I agree wholeheartedly with that. However, it also strikes me that you can't have it both ways. If council wants to micromanage the board, then as a consequence you are going to have long agendas at council meetings. You can't then complain that "we didn't understand the implications of this". The alternative is to elect a board and allow it to get on and run the organisation. If you don't like what the board does, throw them out and elect a new board.

I suspect there may be a few board members who would be delighted to get voted out

[Angus French]

The fact is that discussion of the proposed rules came at the end of the meeting and was rushed. (As an aside, and having attended the last four Council meetings, I feel that recent agendas have been too long and haven't allowed for sufficient discussion of various items. In my view, this risks bad decision making.)

I agree wholeheartedly with that. However, it also strikes me that you can't have it both ways. If council wants to micromanage the board, then as a consequence you are going to have long agendas at council meetings. You can't then complain that "we didn't understand the implications of this". The alternative is to elect a board and allow it to get on and run the organisation. If you don't like what the board does, throw them out and elect a new board.

I suspect there may be a few board members who would be delighted to get voted out

A couple of points:
1. I don't know about the micro-management argument. Personally I believe very much in trying to gain consensus and in engaging with stakeholders (which takes effort, I know). With the County Championship rule changes, for example, I would want to consult directly with county captains if I could otherwise with county reps.
2. I suspect that the Board tries to do too much. I would prefer that it focussed on doing a smaller number of things well - and maybe this would result in smaller agendas for Council meetings.

[Sean Hewitt]

2. I suspect that the Board tries to do too much. I would prefer that it focussed on doing a smaller number of things well - and maybe this would result in smaller agendas for Council meetings.

What does the ECF currently do that you would like to see it stop doing?

[Richard Bates]

My personal suspicion, but only AlexH would know if this is accurate or absolute nonsense, is that when he wrote/put forward the rule he simply didn't foresee a significant possibility that it would be breached. I imagine that he took the view that not fulfilling the requirements was really a pretty easy thing to avoid falling foul of. Because planning properly and fulfilling rule requirements consistently and completely falls easily into his way of working as a match captain/organiser etc. He probably appreciated that some captains are not quite so diligent and methodical, but thought that with the high penalty for a breach that they would be motivated to take more care. And furthermore, in the unlikely event that there was a breach probably thought that all the blame would attach to the failing captain for not managing to perform a basic task. I think he might not have sufficiently appreciated that any beneficiaries of a breach would potentially be as angry about winning as those who lost out. And that the target of the ire would not be the "failing" captain, so much as a completely unnecessary rule/set of penalties of which few really understand the purpose and/or necessity. On the other hand some of the captains, whilst acknowledging the rules, probably simply didn't appreciate on some level that it wasn't possible for common sense to prevail when it all went wrong.

In some ways it is possibly a similar mindset which led to FIDE's mobile phone penalties, or, especially the zero default rule. Rules where the beneficiary can feel as much cheated as the loser (especially with zero default where there isn't even the compensation of rating point gains), which will generally only be breached through "carelessness", but which many people will criticise the rule rather than the careless individual because they simply feel that supposed carelessness is not a serious enough personal failing to justify ruining a game played primarily for pleasure rather than results at all cost.

But this is all just the sort of idle speculation which fits nicely on the forum.