I made a troll post on Facebook, but I would love honest opinions on this past season’s format.
I think it’s pretty obvious I love it: the better of 3v3 and traditional squad combined.
How was your experience playing it? Or as an organizer, or even as a ref.
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As a player I have to admit I still prefer 3v3, its what we play in pickups and that for me is the soul of the sports. but over the season I’ve gotten used to 4v4 and made peace with the fact that that’s where we’re headed.
As an organiser I prefer 4v4, longer games means less breaks in between games (which is what slows down the tournaments the most). And one extra player on all teams also solves a lot of issues (injuries, mechanicals, people being late, …)
Don’t like to ref these long games, my attention span is not… uh look a doggo!
And lastly, I really hope that what ever we converge on is being fixed for the foreseeable future - max newstead pointed out to me that for the last 4 worlds, not 2 consecutive ones had the same format - how are people supposed to build strong teams if the numer of players per team keeps changing?
(On the other hand, to find a good solution we gotta try out different formats, I get it!)
So overall:
for quads (edited)
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Squad (5/6) or Quads (4)?
Yes I mean quads (edited it)
5 is too many!
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3v3 ftw
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3v3 is the informal format of choice, I never expect it to die, not do I expect to replace it; but it’s hardly sustainable at a serious level.
I find it funny that people comment on the many changes in format, when what really happened was the NAH deciding unilaterally a format change for Lexington’s WHBPC and then going back to what it had always been.
If anything we are trying to bring everyone together for once.
I like it, but as when “squad 5 players” was a thing I was always arguing/thinking about what’s the reason to cap it at 5.
With 4 I don’t really get why cap it at 4 either.
To be perfectly honest : I haven’t taken a long time to think about it so it’s more an “intuitive feeling” than a perfectly documented reasoning.
I know quad is for some people just a 3+1 format, which adds flexibility yes, but I do prefer a squad “46” (from 4 to 6 players), a format we chose for several edition of the “countryside tournament”. (30min games)
Said differently :
I like it but I don’t see why it couldn’t expand it a little bit more to be more flexible in my opinion, letting the teams the choice to have +1, +2 or +3 players and the time clock at 30min.
I feel that 3v3 and first to 5 was like some “default rules” that gets pretty “hardwired” into the roots of the game, behind it was no reasoning but only the minimal “ruleset” for the game to exist.
I just fear the 3+1 will “hardwire” a format that may seems at the end a little bit to constrain too, but we don’t know it yet.
I feel 3+1 “force” existing teams to pick a sub than to merge local teams to form a “real” club team.
(I’m fine with our pick, vice world champ, c’mon <3) but I think a more flexible approach could be really interesting.
If I could chose I think I’d go for a squad 4-6 players as a main format for major tournament.
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formats should be thrown left and right but yes i like the 3+1 one
i dont think we should settle for anything close to 3v3 and even push boundaries and experiment more on 4 v 4 on court with +2 + 3 with bigger courts and more zone rules + shot clocks would allow for more interesting game play and will reduce the gap between elite team vs mid team
its a “scientific data” that if u play any sport , the less player in your team the more pressure is put on each individual
bike polo is prime exemple of “first team to fuck up gets punished” because of the tight 3 player team on court.
allowing more players on court alleviate the pressure on each of them
it also opens up the passing options to an interesting level.
with more passing options but a timed possession, aggressivity ingame will lessen.
i know its not easy to materialize but when we have great unlimited space like tempelof you could create whatever you dream of.
33 will always stay the default pick up option by lack of infrastructure and its enough but we could build something bigger for events.
Quads is for sure the first step to switch from street game to proper team sport.
Definitely is much better for the organizer to respect the scheduled time (mechanical time out will not interfere the games).
By a sociological POW allow better team building that 3vs3.
Maybe I’m blind but I will not switch back to 3vs3 format for EC and WC.
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