OK, I think probably what Chris and Saab, and others, are getting at is, we need not dwell on negatives too long otherwise, this in itself can become counter-productive to the cause.
In the UK we do have positives, lots of them, it's a matter of recognition first, then putting them into some form of context and then coming up with a plan of action.
It serves no purpose whatsoever throwing in a few cliché’s here and there as a rallying call and then expect everything to start falling into place because some people have been inspired by a few well meant (but inappropriate) words of encouragement.
And when I used the word 'inappropriate' there, I don't mean to suggest the encouragement wasn't needed, I just meant the rallying calls were inappropriate in the way they made people think about our problem.
If what I am saying is true in that we need to revitalize our tourney circuit then there are but two approaches, one is short to mid term and the other, mid to long.
The short to mid term solution is this: - I am convinced that we have a player base in this country that if sufficiently organized can provide us with a dominant position in the Millennium.
I ain't talking about winning every divisional title here, I am talking about our average performances as a nation being dominant, and that means a lot more teams in the Millennium getting a lot better results.
This can be achieved by a subtle rearrangement of our player base because far too many good players out there are playing for teams who are indifferent to improvement.
We have an inertia of team involvement over here that sometimes holds back aspiring talent in that good players end up playing for teams who do not aspire toward the same goals.
And so my recommendations would be, we all take a serious look at why we play this game, if you feel your sporting ethos isn't matched by your team mates, then look to move to a team that does.
In this way, serious ballers will begin, over a period of time to aggregate and therefore, in time, bring up the average quality within our teams.
Now I am working on the premise that as we are now, in the teams we are presently in (generally speaking) we ain't gonna be doing that much in terms of a collective improvement, after all, we haven't really shown anything too significant recently that suggests otherwise.
If it weren’t for the Kelly’s and Shock, what the fukk would we have?
Seriously, what have we got?...think about that for a moment or two.
And so, to move away from this dire state of affairs we need to change our game plan and come up with credible alternatives to just sitting around and hoping things get better.
If players take my advice and question why they play this sport of ours and decide it’s because they are serious sportsmen then it’s incumbent upon them to make the effort and make sure they optimize their commitment and talent by making damned sure the team they are in has that same ethos and if not, move on.
This is one positive, and hugely important thing we can do as Brit ballers to begin any resurgence.
There is no greater tragedy in any sport if a talented, committed player just settles playing for a team because he doesn’t want to upset anybody on that team.
I am not saying you should be disloyal, I am just suggesting that perhaps it’s about time you should be loyal to yourself.
Ok, onto my second plan of action, and this is one that requires a little more organizing because it requires different strands of the industry to work together.
To understand this problem we need to recognize what our end goal is, and it is an increased population of tourney ballers.
But it’s not as simple as that because we need the right type of player to swell the ranks and not just an increase in a similar demographic.
Basically, as I have said before, we have far too many displaced recballers in our tourney ranks because they have no other alternative to play if they wanna move away from rental play.
To facilitate this qualitative increase in our tourney base, we need to educate people and there are two ways in which we can do this.
Firstly the easier course, we need our site owners to expand their business operations to include Sup Air fields and coupled with that, they must adopt a positive policy of promotion.
They have a captive audience in their rental market when they arrive on site and it won’t take much investment to have a fair percentage of these customers getting interested in Sup Air if the appropriate presentations are done.
As I have said before, perhaps a DVD running on site, magazines laying around etc, it’s not difficult to sell sup air, it sells itself to the young male demographic, on this point I am 100% convinced, I have just seen it soo many times myself to ignore the attraction tourney ball holds for the virgin male onlooker.
The site owner can then transform his twice yearly rental customer into a monthly walk-on and you don’t have to be any sort of mathematician to work out the benefits of that increased business…….
If this is done across sufficient sites, then in time we will see an increase in the tourney population as players will migrate from rentals through to walk-ons and ultimately into tournaments.
The second part to this is a tad more difficult because it involves various bodies getting together and putting together a coherent working strategy of promotion.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, Germany has shown us all that direct marketing of tourney ball to the public works….understand this because it is extremely important here……We need to get into malls and market tourney ball with presentation DVD’s leaflets, magazines, whatever, the important thing is to get out there and do it. ….if an outfit like Delta Force can do it then bejeeezus, I am sure the rest of the industry can.
I know the product of tourney ball is a million times more attractive than Rambo ball and if Delta Force can make a ton of dosh charging the prices they do , and providing the sort of facilities they do, then any enterprising co-operative can make a lot more than those guys with the product we have.
Obviously, behind that promo campaign we have to have an infrastructure of sites providing the facilities and this is where we need sites and industry to work together.
Sites really need to get real here and I remain unconvinced as to whether they have the necessary professionalism or business acumen to adopt this new thinking.
I will be more than pleased to be proved wrong on this point.
Anyway, if something is actually done in this direction then this will have an enormous effect on our tourney population.
So there you have it. ….positivism returns….a little hope even rears its head and yet we still come to the realization that we need to actually do something.
I will give my time and effort to any serious and coherent campaign to help us along but unless it’s organized and going in the right direction with the right people making the right noises and doing the right things then it won’t be worth attempting.
