SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP Charleston Women's Shootout

That's really all that we had Saturday at our fields.

I just had a great mental image of a field full of players freezing mid-stride and face planting. Though, if I face plant onto the ball, does that mean it's my ball now and I get the possession on restart?



Seriously though, I think infamy is a bit of overkill. Bit of a bad rap as usual, yeah. But rain happens across the country and tournaments are affected everywhere with rain or snow or whatever, several mentioned here.

Part of what anyone has to consider too though is location, season, history, etc. whenever you apply to a tournament and you've already noted knowing the history of rain and cancellations. WAGS can snow-out. We had a Raleigh snow-out when I was young. Field quality/etc. decisions are generally made with the club and the rest of the season in mind, not one weekend of games.

There is always the team's ability to step back and say, hey, we don't want to risk it...let's go elsewhere.

That said, do people ever always make the right decision? Of course not, but they do what they think is best, with whatever justifications, and it won't please anyone. Will they experience this again? Probably, unless something is sorted out. But that doesn't mean anyone needs to be flipping out over it...just quietly vote with your feet because that speaks more eloquently than any threat.


On another note, can we institute Challenges and Replays for when your player beats mine en route to goal and mine falls over?


EDITED FOR CLARITY

The English Leagues have actually discussed Instant Replay but have opted not to institute it in favor of continuous play.

OK, then, I'm getting confused...I get a little lost sometimes when faced with seemingly contradicting points. Is your argument:

A. MPSC should have canceled the tournament early because they knew the weather would cause closings.

B. MPSC should not have canceled the tournament games at all because the weather they should have known would cause closings should not have caused closings.

or

C. Some teams should have gotten their "money's worth" while others were penalized, based on luck of the draw on field locations rather than universal rescheduling.

Please clarify, as I am a little slow.

And I just had an even better one...coach replacing the dribbler with the pinch-shooter and rolling her away on a trolley, still frozen.

I believe that given the forecasts, the fact that their fields were closed most of the week prior due to the conditions,and their history of closing the fields on the whim of a notion, that the tournament should have been cancelled.

Once it was started they should have used all options to complete the tournament. They did not do this.They had other options that they failed to excercise. Among those were using the fields that were open for play on Sunday morning to play games on Sunday afternoon. By sunday afternoon more venues would have dried up considerably and should have been available for play.

Option A should have been to cancel the tournament before it began. Once they failed to do that then they had an obligation to finish as many games as was possible. They failed to do that.

As it stands now, some brackets did manage to finish it with these 20 minute Jamborees while other brackets were awarded ties for unplayed matches.

(pausing surreptitiously to turn a frozen defender a quarter-turn to the left before leaving the field)

That poor defender will be wondering why they're suddenly running off the field...oh well, just tell them they were headed to the bathroom, they won't know the difference

Another note, I know for a fact that it was raining just 6-10 minutes down the road at Snee Farm and Town Centre, pretty steadily, a good part of the afternoon and evening. It's not impossible that some fields would have been unscathed, but most would certainly not have dried out.

Again, in all fairness...I don't think there was any way to satisfy everyone when something as unpredictable as the weather is involved. Had they canceled the tournament before it got started, they would have been seen as alarmist and unwilling to follow through; people who had planned their weekend around this tournament, reserved hotel rooms, canceled other plans, passed up other opportunities for competition, etc. would have likely been most unhappy about canceling a few days before the start time on a chance of rain, refund or no refund. We were supposed to be playing in a tournament in Jekyll Island next weekend, and I just got official notice yesterday that our bracket was canceled due to a shortage of teams. We have a refund coming, but there was a lot of preparation (not to mention difficulties in rescheduling rained-out games) involved in planning to attend. I'm not particularly happy about it, especially since they surely knew before this weekend whether enough teams had signed up to play.

So....if you cancel early, you get a bad reputation for being unreliable as a tournament host. If you try to follow through and the weather and the people who control the fields don't cooperate, you get a bad reputation for being unreliable as a tournament host. The only way to come out on top is if things that are under your control AND things that are beyond your control come together just right, and that is a gamble in any circumstance. I don't think there was any intentional attempt to mismanage the tournament. Perhaps some mistakes were made, but I don't think it's reasonable to say that it's all a plot to defraud and disappoint. It's a bad situation we all got caught up in, and we might as well deal with it and move on.