In the article 'The great Monmouth Eligibility Scandal' included in the last issue I deliberately limited my comments on the grounds that being a Monmouth player, I could not be seen as a disinterested party. However, having given the matter further consideration, I have changed my mind. So long as you are aware that I have a personal interest which may cloud my judgement, I see no harm in stating my point of view.
Welsh Challenge Cup Eligibility Rules.
By the time Jon has finished his investigation he will undoubtedly be in possession of more information than I have at present, so he may possibly come to a conclusion that differs from this article. If I eventually have to backtrack on some of the statements that follow, I hope you will understand.
As I understand it the, position is as follows. Chris Dunworth, who captained Monmouth for a few years, was away in India last year and therefore did not qualify to play for the team under the six game rule. However, during the period when the matches were being played he was resident in Gwent (I think in Cearleon) and eligible to play under the residence rule. At this stage there is no suggestion that either Chris or Monmouth have broken the rules, merely an investigation to ensure that he was eligible under the rules. The outcome of this investigation will be included in this ezine in due course.
Editors Comments.
A recent email from Jon Gilbert contained the following:-
The rules for eligibility as can be seen on my website are basically
either
1) 6 games in the Gwent league this year or
2) Currently Living
(resident) in Wales when the challenge cup starts
(postal addresses only with
no residence obviously do not count)
I'll come straight to the point, I can live with rule 1 (although I would like to see it amended) but I think the residence rule was a mistake, it should go. It's simply too open to abuse. There are a few very strong players who might best be described as having no fixed abode. In the unlikely event that Pontypridd ever qualified for the competition I'd be very tempted to invite one to stay with me for a month or so, enrol them as a member of the club and play them in the cup. I wouldn't feel I was doing anything wrong, because the rules as they are frames invite this sort of behaviour.
So what is to be done about it? It appears that, as so often in Welsh chess, we have reacted to particular situations and ended up with a mish-mash of rules through which any second rate pettifogging lawyer could ride a coach and horses. Nobody is to blame. It's the way we do things. But it really isn't good enough. Before any set of rules is framed people should write down the objectives and if necessary what they are trying to achieve by those objectives, and only then should they try and draw up the rules to meet those objectives.
I don't think this is an impossible task, so rather than just criticising, I've had a go myself. My objectives and the resulting rules are given below. I'm not saying they should be accepted, there are others around who have more experience and are better at doing this sort of thing. It's up to them whether or not they decide to do it. My suggestions only concern the eligibility rules which are the ones which seem to be causing the problems.
First objective.
The rules should be unambiguous.
Either someone qualifies or they don't. we should try and avoid appealing to words like 'residence' which could be open to different interpretations.
Second objective
The teams that play in the cup should be made up of players who represented the clubs in the league that season and people who have a close association with the club.
I think its ok to play people who have taken a year off for some reason. But if they haven't played for the club for the last two or more years, could they really be said to be still closely associated with the club. There is also a question of making things reasonably easy to check, so I don't think we should go back more than three years.
Third objective.
To allow for the variations in the number of games played in the various leagues while not preventing larger clubs from making legitimate use of their greater resources.
In Gwent there are ten matches a year over four boards while East Glam has 18 over five boards (I'm not sure of the position in the other leagues). If eligibility is based on a fixed number of games Gwent teams would be penalised, so a percentage basis would be better. However, larger clubs should not be penalised because they may split their strength over several teams, not all of which may be in the first division. In addition, since this is a club competition, there is no reason to exclude lower team or lower division players.
With these objectives in mind I decided on the following rules.
A player shall be deemed eligible if:
1. He/she played at least 40% of the available games the season during which the team qualified for the current years competition or
2. Played a at least 60% of the available games in each of the two immediately preceding seasons.
Available games shall be defined as league games for the club in the league competition from which they qualified. The number of such games shall be equal to the number of matches scheduled to be played by first division clubs (or simply clubs if there is only one division) in the league from which they qualified and in the year in which they qualified.
It would be interesting to receive comments or suggestions regarding this matter.
Best wishes
Dai James.