IN T' NET
An occasional Basketball Diary ... (from Yorkshire, in case tha'd not noticed)
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07/08/05
I was really pleased, late last night, when I finally finished the last of the Club pages - the first time that I've managed to have a page online for every single team in the senior EBL.
Unfortunately it turns out that the "buttons" I'd used, to create the links from the Club Index to the individual pages, don't show up on some browsers. I know that they work all right on Internet Explorer, but on others, such as Mozilla Firefox, there's some sort of issue with Java Applets that means that the buttons just appear as grey blanks, with no link attached!
So, having thought I'd finished, I've just spent much of today redoing that page, using a different linking method, and it seems to work now! If it still doesn't for any of you, or if I've cocked up any of the links in the process, please let me know.
One item that really caught my eye in the recent news releases was the new format for the BBL Trophy.
Not that the change itself surprised me, as that competition seems to have a different set-up every couple of seasons.
The idea of introducing more EBL teams, to give a wider variety of games, certainly seems a worthwhile one. After all, one or two clubs from the EBL have been involved for several seasons, since the BBL itself dropped below twelve clubs.
However, the EBL teams that have been included, and their distribution, did raise my eyebrows somewhat. Last season, for instance, Teesside Mohawks (the top remaining EBL team after Plymouth had opted to move into BBL) took part, while the year before it was the top two - Teesside and Plymouth.
This year the EBL teams taking part will be London United, Worthing, Teesside and Leopards - 2nd, 5th, 7th and 8th respectively!
What about EBL treble-winners, Sheffield Arrows? Were the League Champions not invited? Or did they turn the chance down? What happened to Reading (3rd) and Worcester (5th)? How do Manchester (6th) feel about it?
Then there's the format of the competition. Three Pools of five team! With four to qualify for the semi-finals. That gives us the old worst-case scenario of having to determine the "best second placed" team.
Also, the composition of the Pools seems, to me, to be somewhat lopsided:
In Group 1 (the North) we have Teesside (7th in EBL1) alongside Chester (BBL Champions), Newcastle (BBL runners-up, Trophy Winners and Championship Winners), Sheffield (4th) and Rocks (6th).
Group 2 (Central) has Leopards (8th in EBL) with Towers (BBL 3rd), Milton Keynes (8th), Leicester (10th) and Birmingham (12th). Hmmm. No obvious qualifier there, then.
Finally, in Group 3 (South) we have London United (EBL 2nd) and Worthing (EBL 5th) taking on Brighton (5th), Plymouth (9th) and Guildford (new ... but Tigers were 7th).
I know that the strengths of different teams varies from year to year, but that little lot seems about as well balanced as I am! If I had a team in the competition, I know which Group I'd most like to be in ... and which one I'd want to steer well clear of.
Anyway, with three Groups, I wonder how (or if) they're going to manage to retain the one consistent factor in the Trophy during all its years of existence - that the Final has always been North against South?
03/08/05
One of the problems of publishing the provisional fixture lists as soon as they're available is that I then have to go through and amend them when the final version is released. That's what I've spent the last couple of days doing, so the senior divisional lists, and matrixes, should now be the definitive version.
Most of the changes are fairly minor, such as switching from a Saturday to the Sunday, with a few where pairs of teams have swapped home and away dates. There are, though, a few where clubs have found the original date inconvenient (or impossible to meet), and there are some where a match has moved by several weeks (in one case, from the first weekend of the season to the last).
For those of you who have already made a personal note of specific fixtures, for your diaries, I've highlighted changed dates (and venues) in orange, so that you don't have to trawl right through to find any amendments. Once the season starts I'll change them all back to black, and then highlight any later changes in orange.
One thing I noticed, as I went through the lists, was that there was one division that displays no changes whatever from the original provisional list! That's Division 3 Men South-East.
What I'm now wondering is whether we should be congratulating them for having players who are totally flexible about when they play, and venues that are able to accommodate their matches whenever they may be scheduled.
Since that seems pretty far-fetched, I hope the alternative explanation isn't right - that they've not yet got round to checking whether the schedule they've been given is convenient and possible!
Looking at some of the teams in that division, though, I'm by no means convinced!
It'll be interesting to see, once the season begins, whether my cynicism is justified.