And friendly tournaments are the best way to test the waters to see if an idea sticks or not.

Karl, go for it!!

Arnold
http://www.edinburghkorfball.co.uk/

Having said that, maybe korfball needs its "guts ripping out". Its no better developed now than when I was a kid in primary school getting accused of making it up by my 7 year old buddies.

The tournament scene in the UK has been dead for many years and it would make sense to look to use tournaments to experiment with changes to the way the game is played or structure

Seriously, I have been to a lot of tournos over the last few years and they have been anything but 'dead'. ( You should come to a few Steve, and flog some of your gear:).

I know some took a hit last year, but who didn't? There is a resession on. We have a great sport. We should have more faith.
It is our weakness to keep tampering with the rules.

Rules apart though, you could have fancy dress, half time bingo, custard pie fights or whatever!

That tournament scene has changed radically over the past 20 years and has gone from fewer high quality tournaments, such as the LDKA and University of London tournaments, well attended by clubs who fielded their strongest possible teams, and as a result popular with foreign clubs.

The finals of such tournaments would be watched by a crowd bigger than is often seen at modern major events.

As clubs realised that tournaments were a way of making some money more and more appeared but as the numbers grew the quality fell and we began to see strong club first teams and more teams with zany names and T shirts.

My description of them being 'dead' comes from a comparison to those times and of course someone who has never known any better would see them as alive and kicking.

I am not sure how the 'recession' has had any impact on tournaments mind you

One way of trying to breath some life back into the tournament scene would be to run rule experiments (I have never been a fan of fancy dress Korfball) and there is no reason why we could not see and old style 3 zone tournament in the future

However, to class tournaments as dead because they don't promote the highest possible standard of competition is a bit like saying you can't breathe underwater using a garden spade. A spade isn't designed for that, and I don't think anyone designs a tournament these days because they only want the highest possible standard of competition.

I don't see any obstacles to clubs holding tournaments that only accepted a certain level of team or player if they thought it was a good idea.

Our little tourney in Leicester is growing from strength to strength. More and more clubs attend every year and sign up is up on last year again already. We noticed that everyone's tourneys followed a similar format so we do ours a little differently.

It's not a new rule, but we had the first tourney with 30 seconds of countdown music as games come to a close. It's great fun, a team which is 10-0 down still plays their guts out at the end of the match as it becomes a bit of a personal trophy to score during the countdown. We have since been to a few tourneys which have introduced it themselves.

Another idea I had was a hot spot; each division has a 1m circle marked out in an identical spot. After scoring from the spot, the team gets a penalty during which the opposition are allowed to try and distract the shooter. Still tempted...

Anyway, my point is that tournaments have become a method of getting together nationwide for an event which is competitive, fun, interactive and great for players of any level. If you removed them, you limit local and regional league players to the area they play in.

Ideas like Karl's are brilliant, and add another dimension to the tournament scene and might reveal something new about our game.

I honestly don't believe the sport is big enough to start having two or three versions running at the same time. Because no-one knows what it is, explaining the 2 or 3 variations would just put up another barrier to entry. But there's nothing wrong with trials at tourneys while we work on the numbers problem.

as steve has sais they usedto be very competative with all the best teams entering them with full strength teams.

but times have changed,back then outdoor korfball in london was big and now it dosnt even exsist.

I cant remember any players ever being missing cause they was at uni let alone 1 whole team being made up of players at uni.

the NL is now 2 or 3 months longer then it was so alot of the NL players use the summer as a break where as before by the time the 1st tournament come around you had had 3 months off and couldnt wait to get started again.

I also think 10 years ago teams where more even except maybe mitcham.
whereas now if teams placed 3 to 6 are missing 1 players they cant compete so the other players dont want to go as they know they will end up in a pool much lower then they are use to.

also ive seen alot of teams get stronger as the day goes on through bring other players in and i think other people got annoyed witht that so took tournaments less serious.

i think the mitcham tournament of a few years ago where they put money up for the winner proved this,there was alot of talk on things like facebook with top players organising there teams just to win the money and i think this put alot of normal average teams off.

tournaments are alive and kicking and there is more now then there ever was the problem is if you have so many with so few top players/teams then the quality is going to be lower.

i think mitcham idea was a good one and maybe doing that again but running it alongside a normal event might work.

maybe 10 top teams fighting it out for the money and 20 fun/starter teams im sure one of the bigger tournaments like nomads or croydon could do that

Now, can korfball be more popular and more played? I think yes, as the growth of Dutch field hockey shows, at least in The Netherlands.

Can korfball get an international reach as large as track and field, football, gymnastics? No, of course not. Can it get a reach like rugby, ice skating? Sure. These are sports that are large in a limited number of countries.

And I don't know how big basketball is in England, but in The Netherlands it's about 5-10 times smaller in official member size than korfball. But, as an American product, it gets more attention and relatively more money by sponsors.

I would love to try out some of Karl's suggestions but I really don't think Korfball needs a "major" overhaul. It needs *something*, but wholesale changes isn't what we need.

That said I do think it is important to continue to explore ways of making the sport more attractive to both players and spectators.

There is no doubt that changes to the game such as tactical substitutions and time out have allowed coaches to have a greater influence on games with positive effect.

At the highest level I would like to see this expanded on, either with an additional time out or the games split into quarters. I also believe that we need to continue to remain open to the concept of returning subs, with appropriate limitations.

The shot clock has also proved a change that has improved the sport, although its need was only pressing because of the dull pedestrian rebound block tactics that were choking the sport to death in terms of spectator appeal.

Tournaments remain the obvious places to try out such changes and those such as the 2 or 3 point circle as the KNKV have been doing at the Korfball challenge over the past few years.

The problem is with is all too often such matters are decided by a small committee, many not players nor coaches whereas what is needed is greater input from players and coaches around the world, not just the Netherlands.

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