22nd place is the lower part of mid-table, so presumably your draw for Maxs would have been largely upper-mid-table teams. Obviously if you have a better team (you don't get a 4th and 3rd place purely with a lucky draw), you will be able to work your way up the seedings. If you are one of the lower teams in the division, there is little chance to improve on a bad first result as you get drawn against teams you are most likely to lose against, which is really disheartening. At the same time, the top teams have a much easier time getting to Sunday because they only play the lower teams.
Now it should be obvious why this is - the system must be designed to ensure that the better teams get to the quarter finals, and eventually you should have the two best teams in the final, rather than knocking each other out in the prelims.
You could say the lower teams just have to play better and they will progress, but it's not that simple - some players will always be more talented, or have more time to train, or more support and resources to improve. But it would be nice for those poor teams in the bottom bracket to have at least a few games against similarly-ranked teams, and have a chance to move against those teams, rather than get the feeling they're paying a load of money to go and have their arses handed to them. As it is their only other option is to go and play a lower division. Except they have to wait a season to do that.
The Tigers Am squad playing Millenniums this year have only had a couple of players of real Div 1 quality, but valued the challenge of playing at a higher level over the satisfaction of getting better results in Div 2. But by being drawn against not just harder teams, but most of the hardest teams in the division, and the dawning realisation that it'll be the same all year, has somewhat knocked the enthusiasm out of the players. So now there aren't enough players to field a team, for the second event in a row, and those of us that do still want to play aren't able to because of the transfer rules. Net result: Millennium loses our money.
Now I know next to nothing about how draws and schedules are operated, so I have no idea what the answer is. The system has to ensure that the finals always have the best teams, and as a result it ensures that the bottom teams are ejected as soon as possible. Seems like the only solution for individual teams is to give up for the year and try again next year in a lower Div.
