Grading Games & Honest Discussions

Not true. Wests 3rds had been smashing other sides for years by 10 goal margins, but were probably never as good as their reserve side at any stage. Therefore they have been correctly ranked the whole time. They asked to move up, and I recall other sides in their leagues supporting this as well. CF however didn't move them. So it's taken about 5 years of hidings to get to the grade they asked to be moved to.

do clubs always have that luxury though? Presumably the marmosets would have been out in a higher grade if Island bay could do so, but instead they get put in the lowest division and smash everyone 14-0 or whatever. Or for arguments sake, a brand new team (with the same skill) joined Island bay, but they had no room to move them up, so they end up beating teams 14-0 or whatever every week. 

There has to be a way round that surely? 

Is there some sort of system whereby if a team drops out of one club, that spot in the division is given to CF who then allocates it accordingly? In which case CF could make the decision to put the marmosets back into the division they were previously in if they thought it were appropriate. 

As a Cap 14 team captain, I've seen such mis-matches first-hand.  However, two of our best games this season have been against the ex-Karori Cap 9 side and Tawa AC United #2 (1-4 and 1-3 losses).  Being able to match these teams for a lot of the game and not coming off with a coronary is actually a point for us to celebrate.  Personally I like the mid-season promotion-relegation as it means that if there is a gun side in the grade, at least we only have to play them once.

For this year, the Goldenrods were actually supposed to play in Cap 13 and the Uni Wanderers in Cap 14.  We decided to swap as we felt the younger guys (who'd beaten us on the last match of last season) deserved to play higher than us.  As it turned out with team defections, the Wanderers ended up in Cap 12.

I agree with Feverish that it should be a club decision to sort out.  Some tough decisions are required, especially if you get a new team that is much better than some of your established sides - effectively you may have to ask that established side to drop down a division or two to let the new side take their spot.

As a former club captain I remember pouring over the list of grade allocations we received at the start of the season and the committee discussing whether we should make any changes.  In a couple of instances we swapped teams around in adjacent grades.  One of our big issues was knowing how well some of the first-year student sides were going to play in comparison with old-hands.  Trials helped us a little. 

Perhaps clubs should be having more of an organised pre-season for their social football teams, if only to judge how they compare to each other.

some people are also forgetting (or they don't actually know) how much change of personnel there is in a team from one season to the next. Not to mention when clubs merge two teams because they have lost half a team each.

and Tegel the answer to that is no. Teams would go club hopping at a whim if their spot belonged to them - which would severely screw over the clubs in many ways.

When our team moved in its entirety from North Welly to Petone about 5 years ago, we got lucky as a Petone team have moved to Masters from the grade we had been in. If it hadn't, we would have been stuck in Div 16.

You'd be surprised at how many teams would happily move down one grade or up one grade if asked just for the opportunity to play other teams. With cricket, our team won our grade this year but didn't really concern us if we moved up or stayed where we were as long as the team stayed together. Winning the grade was enough to celebrate for us (regardless to say, the mighty Onslow Originals have been promoted to 4th Grade this coming season!)

I wouldn't be surprised as I've organised twenty odd teams for half a dozen plus years. Sure people say I want to form a super team this year and we want to play grade X or better. The only way you can get this to happen is if you shuffle your pack (like other club managers have mentioned here). So far your best concept seems to be to form a cricket team instead.

It's a tough one to get right but think clubs do need to be realistic about where they enter teams. Perhaps some sort of grading system prior to the season could be good, but then of course you'd have half the players still playing cricket so that couldn't happen. Think some sort of grading at the start should at least happen for new teams where it may not be clear what their level is.

At North Wellington last season I was put in a new team that was entered in Cap 6. There were 2 or 3 of us who had played at that sort of level before but the majority of the team were under 21s playing their first season of senior football. The U21 league had been cancelled due to their only being 4 teams, 3 of which were from North Wellington so the club had all these U21 players to put somewhere. And without wanting to cause any offence, 20 and 21 year olds still playing in U21s usually don't tend to be the elite players of that age group as those would be playing for first/reserve teams or already playing in senior grades. Consequently Cap 6 was way too high and we lost 8-0 every week, even to the other teams down the bottom and noone enjoyed it. One case where a brand new team should have been entered down the bottom, or at least some sort of grading might have helped to decide what a suitable level was.

People may have laughed at the results, but we trained twice a week and gave it everything we had, but it was unfortunately just too high a level. I assume the club already had that cap 6 spot and didn't want to give it up, but it should have been clear from the start that the team placed there wasn't up to that level.

Shame how it worked out as I had just moved to Johnsonville and it was convenient for me to play at a club where training and home games were just down the road, but now this year I've ended up playing elsewhere across town in order to avoid being put at an unsuitable level again.

I just think there could be some learning opportunities from cricket. CW make it very easy to interact with them and take all request into consideration. I understand, they are dealing with far fewer teams, but the principle remains the same.

A team wants to play the game, we want them to play while retaining the teams we have, let's make it as enjoyable as possible by pitting people against similar skill levels as best we can.

Wests fault for dumping their social teams. Go to Tawa insead

shame you moved clubs but i understand why.

it would be nice if these new members to our club who report to know what they are doing would understand football a bit better and not cause these problems in the first place.

as for NW div 6 last year i know a effort was made by some club members to correct the grading issue and the president of the club said it was not possible but latter in the season one of the div6 teams did manage to play a slightly lower grade after more protests from club members.

i hope you are having a better season this year.

Yeah that was our team, we were eventually switched with the NW cap 7 team for the last 5 or so games, but 1 division down was still way too high and results were not much different although by that point people had got fed up and stopped turning up so it became a struggle to scrape 11 players together. 

This season is going a bit better, thanks. Still losing most weeks but managed a couple of wins and games have been closer than what I had been used to. 

the odd mismatch happens at every level of every sport 

Yeah of course the odd one does, and it's fair enough to expect a couple of big losses a season against the top couple of teams (unless you're lucky enough to be one of them one year). But losing 8-0 on average every single week, even to the 2nd and 3rd bottom teams who lose most weeks then clearly the team is playing at an unsuitable level. It should be reasonable to expect the odd close game in a season. 

 here in wanganui there is only one local league with 16 teams and the age range is teenagers through to 60 + year olds. we play one full round and then split into a top 8 and bottom 8.there are some close games and some major blow outs one game on the weekend ended 18-1.

wanganui city and wanganui athletic have put their reserve teams into this league instead of travelling to palmerston north to play in the western premiership, not sure if this is helping their players progress or improve.

Oh hang on before people were talking about teams that win every week..

there is usually two sides to unbalanced leagues (the extreme winners and the extreme losers) and as you and others have pointed out to us previous.

the club needs to get there selection policy correct otherwise it is just a joke.

we want competition not participation like little kids at junior level.

feverish, I never said the spot would belong to the team, I said it'd belong to CF if a team drops out from a club. Then CF can use it as they see fit. Provides more flexibility for new teams and is better than your solution of "just move clubs"

So a team drops out of a club. Presumably to go to another club. But that's better that my supposed solution of 'just move clubs'. Come again? If you are talking about a team folding then your 'solution' doesn't work either.