I propose a significant change to this promotion/relegation system for next season. I think the grand final winner in Div2 should go straight up to Premier, and we should relegate an extra team from Premier to accommodate. We’ve seen a lot of coaches over the years get relegated down to Div 2 and then just drop out completely. It’s currently a long road to get into Premier from Div2, especially when Div1 is so cut-throat. On that, I feel it’s important not to change the promotion/relegation rules for Div1 to accomodate the extra delist from Premier. Mainly because we can’t have more than five teams being relegated from any league. So we should still have 3 promotions and 5 relegations from Div1. This keeps the Div2 promotions at five, with the only difference being that one will go to Premier, with the other four still moving to Div1. We’d probably need to revisit this at some stage if we move to four leagues again. What does everyone think?
I like the idea of flattening the structure under Premier, so maybe Div 1 and 2 actually become East and West with an equal number of teams (2 from each?) moving up to Premier.
Thanks Stowie. I worry with this idea about diluting Div1. At present, there’s a big difference in standard between Div1 & Div2. Div1 is super competitive, which is great, whereas Div2 often has teams which drop off early/midway in the season who become easy-beats. And some other Div2 coaches are less engaged in general. But not all obviously! I think the Div2 grand final winner is definitely worthy of promotion to Premier, but I worry about levelling both leagues because I can see it creating two less-than-ideal leagues, when currently Div1 is pumping every year. Also, it would be nice to get back to having four leagues at some point, and that would work best with a Div1 league in the middle of the structure.
I upvote your idea Anthak. leave the division structure as is.. makes it worth something to be promoted. if we get more players, more leagues, make their structure also have a skip or direct to premier.
As a case study I would like to see if we can sort out the promotion/ relegation triggers before next season. I am not having a sook. But it looks like this season I will just miss out on promotion. The promotion triggers are currently win grand final. Then most wins, then most points for. And these are taken as individual classification’s. I would propose that these going forward are taken as weight of importance in tie breakers. Ie. if win loss is equal at end of season is a tie then it goes to points for as tiebreaker. But finals win is the first trigger. This seasons div one results for promotion/relegation would be slightly different. Maybe even include playoff for 3rd 4th as part of tiebreaker. Could make playing til end of season just as competitive as 1st vs 2nd. My reason is questioning the points for as a promotion category is a player who is more active on waivers during season can accumulate more points for by a considerable margin yet not be as good a team in the wins for during regular season or finals structure. This season the best team had the fewest waiver claims yet most points for. Which is a perfect player anomaly. Yet 2nd thru to 6th or 7th is really close when more than one promo cat is taken. Might be rambling now. Just woke up.
I'm trying to win for you! Rev is just unstoppable this season! lol I did beat him earlier in the season, but that was when I had Chris Paul and Steph Curry, as well as Jerami Grant, Kris Middleton and Jimmy Butler all firing! To have this discussion about who should get promoted, we would need to decide what is the most important factor of success warranting promotion. For me, I think total points scored is the best and fairest indicator of a team's success, mainly because we play different opponents unequal amounts of times in a season. The current setup factors this in, by making total points the last considered factor, meaning that it is used as a tie breaker of sorts for all the remaining teams to decide the third team promoted. I doubt that it is controversial to say that the grand final winner should always be promoted. However, apart from the grand final, I dont think we should place too much importance on the playoffs to determine the promotions. Its a long season. Playoff matches can go either way, often impacted by unfortunate injuries or scheduling issues etc, especially this time of year. I believe we need to reward teams who have performed best during the regular season. The Div 1 promotions are fairly simple. The grand final winner, the best regular season record, the most points-for. Given what I have stated above, there is an argument to suggest we should just have it as the grand final winner and the two teams with best points-for. However I feel that the team with the best record in the regular season should also be rewarded. Perhaps we could say that if the team with the best record is also the grand final winner, then the two next best teams for points-for will be promoted. Im not sure that I want to complicate the process more than it already is. In saying all this, I'm definitely open to ideas and am open to changing it if we can come up with a better option.
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the playoffs? It seems to me that the playoffs were created just so that the best would play with the best who could make the playoffs.