So, so far in the second round of this year's contest, we have lost two strong teams, including a much fancied one at that; this has happened with numerous strong teams over the previous years the system has been used. This has led to some, myself included, thinking it might be time to change the rules again, and move the group phase to the second round. But would that work?
Well, Only Connect is proving it can at the moment, as it is using the round robin format for an entire sixteen team series. The same could, therefore, theoretically, be applied to the UC second round. The problem, however, is it would drag the second round out for twenty weeks, and the series, assuming the QFs go back to sudden death, would run for 43 weeks overall. Not even Mastermind, which has 24 heats and six semi-finals, runs that long.
One solution to this would be to air two shows a week during the second round, which would keep the number of shows at 43, but cut the number of weeks taken up by 10 to just 33, which is only slightly less than it is now.
Weaver's Week have expressed their dissatisfaction with the current system a handful of times over the five series it has been used for now, including at the start of this current series. Back in 2011, they proposed a prolonged second round phase involving groups of three teams, from which the top two from each would progress; but this would come at the cost of abandoning the first round repechage.
That idea could work with four groups of four teams, but we'd almost certainly need multiple shows a week for that, as, assuming all in one group all play each other once, that'd take the second round up to 24 shows.
The problem with the current format is it does seem to wind the series down somewhat; last series, things wound down somewhat in the latter stages of the QFs, before picking up again in the semis. Indeed, you have to follow the show every week to get the hang of the system, and casual viewers who watch when they can could be confused. This would probably be worsened if they moved this stage to Round 2 and dragged it out twice as long.
One of the Oxford Brookes team (Mr Joyce?), aka asphinctersays, posted after Monday's show that he thinks moving the group phase to Round 2 would make it too soon, and that the QFs is the right time for it. Fair enough, and I suppose the original idea was the QFs is when the teams really do need to be strongly whittled down so that only the strongest go through, even if it is at the unfortunate cost of losing stronger teams in Round 2.
It does, however, lead to a possible anomaly that a team can have an on-song second round and take out a stronger (in the long run) team, and then return to averageness (if that's a word) in the QFs, this giving stronger teams an easier run. I won't name any times this has happened; in fact, I cannot think of any teams it would be fair to say this happened with.
And, I suppose, after the first round repechage, giving teams multiple shows again so soon is a bit of a muddle. Strong teams who got an unlucky draw in the first round, such as Christ Church last year and Guttenplan's Emmanuel, already get a second cherry bite, so giving all teams another so soon could be seen as unnecessary.
As an aside, now that I've mentioned Guttenplan's Emmanuel, here's a rather controversial suggestion: they shouldn't have made it into the repechage! One question, asking after the origin of the word 'butskellism' was interrupted by the opposing team, who gave both names, but Paxo refused this, and a swerve revealed just Gaitskell's name was needed; Guttenplan took the points and the team took all the bonuses. Had Paxo let the opposition have it, as many on LAM and WW thought at the time, Emmanuel would have gone out there and then! Think of that!
I suppose that's another point that I have made before: it's just a matter of luck on quiz shows, and it depends on which questions you get. An off-day could just be down to an unlucky run of questions, and vice versa.
For example, having just watched our friend Dave Clark's appearance on Fifteen-to-One 2.0 from Monday, the chap who won the show (SPOILER: it wasn't him, unfortunately) had gone out in the second round on his first show, but won with a strong score on his second go. Were it old Fifteen-to-One he'd have gone out after just one show. Likewise with Mark Kerr, the current finals board leader, who went out in the second round on his first show, and on his second, he reached the final and ran up a superb score of 251.
I've gone a bit off topic here. I suppose my point is there are several arguments for shifting the format around a bit, but no satisfactory ones that wouldn't involve multiple shows a week/dragging the show on too long. It's a matter that, hopefully, will continue to provoke much discussion as the second round goes on.
I'll be back on Monday with my usual write-up of the match, which we now know will be between Magdalen and Open.
Any sort of prolonged second round would be a disaster. It would bog down the series needlessly. The only reason Only Connect manages it (if it does! we're only halfway through this series...) is because they have twelve fewer teams to begin with.
ReplyDeleteIf anything were too change, I would advocate proper seeding in the second round.
I’ve been thinking about this for a little while as well, with the demise of Leicester the other week really sparking my thought processes. But I definitely agree with Filip – I’ve always felt that the QF stage is the place for a more prolonged series of games.
ReplyDeleteHe noted last year, if I remember correctly, that round 2 is “always full of shocks”, with strong teams coming through round 1 and looking like clear favourites for the quarters, only to get stuck in round 2. Durham 2012-13 looked like potential winners after round 1, until they came up against Bangor in the second round, who had that narrow winning edge on that occasion (and, indeed, several more times). Liverpool’s side last year had troubles with the bonuses in round 1, despite romping to victory on the buzzer, while Cardiff struggled to get the starters on their debut; yet it was the Welsh Four, the apparently clear underdogs, who fixed their Achilles’ heel more convincingly in round 2. Likewise, Queen’s, Belfast found their form in round 2 and took out Downing, Cambridge, who could have gone very far on the evidence of their debut – but the Cambridge Four couldn’t find their highly impressive form second time round. The list of very good teams that could have gone further if it weren’t for the draw in round 2 is a long one indeed, and I think that’s where the problem lies with a hypothetical extended round 2.
My main issue with the concept of drawing round 2 out is that it’s too soon after another round in which losing a match isn’t necessarily the end. The early stages would be too bloated for their own good if round 2 were to go on for longer than 8 matches. By the quarters, all the remaining teams have pulled through several battles and shown their worthiness of QF positions by seeing off two opponents. In the second round, there are always several archetypes – the team that finds their fire/shakes off their round 1 anxiety (Trinity 2015, Cardiff 2014), the team that doesn’t find their fire in quite the same way (Downing 2014 and, on the buzzer, Leicester 2015), the team that puts on a second straight convincing victory (Somerville 2014) and the team that finds their fire for a second time, but comes up against a team with slightly more fire (Peterhouse, York and Christ Church 2014, Durham 2013 and, on the bonuses, Leicester 2015). I think it’s definitely better to wait until the quarters, when every remaining team has found their fire at least once when it really mattered, to see whether they can keep finding their fire in a hierarchical series of games.
What’s also significant about the QFs is that they’re just at the door of the SFs, so if ever there was a time to really fish out the greatest teams in the series, it’s there. Take last year. I remember everyone saying that 5 of the 8 quarter-finalists looked like potential semi-finallists, but nobody saying that at least 12 of the 16 second-rounders looked like potential quarter-finalists (and in the end, at least 2 of the actual quarter-finalists looked like outsiders at the start of R2!), which I think would have been a fair observation. And then when Trinity and Somerville deservedly took the first two SF places and SOAS (only just) lined themselves up for their place, it was up to Manchester and us to fight for the other seat in the last four. Manchester would have gone out in the QFs in a straight knockout, and their first QF win was not too spectacular, but our first QF defeat was pretty convincing, in spite of the scale of our first QF win. If that kind of match-up were to feature in the second round instead, the rest of the series would probably be a great anti-climax!
I’m surprised at how long that turned out to be. But those are my thoughts.
Thanks for those thoughts Richard.
DeleteIf I may, I could point out that, had the QFs been sudden death last year, nothing would have changed: Filip and co would've beaten Manchester and then SOAS, while Somerville beaten Clare and then yous, to set up the final we actually got. I may decide to speculate further on that front later in the week.
Very true - in the days after our final matches were filmed, one tactic that I employed to try and get over my UC withdrawal symptoms was to think of our Somerville match as a pseudo-semi final!
DeleteOn the other side of the coin, there's the final stages of the 2013 series, where it would have been a UCL-New College final as a result of a straight-knockout QFs; as a result of the round-robin QFs, it was a Manchester win! And in the two matches where UCL met Manchester, the Londoners won the less important one (albeit with a larger margin of victory than Manchester's in the final). Also, if our series had avoided rematches as far as possible by setting up a Trinity-Somerville semi, as several people speculated would happen, we would probably have seen the Trinity-Manchester rematch in the final.
By the QFs and SFs, though, I think it's safe to say, more often than not, that the semi-finalists and potential semi-finalists are demonstrably strong enough that almost any of them could make it to the end - so it's largely a matter of the luck of the draw. As strong as SOAS were in the early stages last year, they were the clear underdogs by the SFs, but a Somerville-Manchester semi, if it had come to that, would have been impossibly difficult to predict. Either of them would have been worthy finalists, but the problem, as with the year before, was that it was impossible to avoid rematches altogether without UCL/Trinity losing in the semis, and they were arguably the very best teams in their respective series.
A second round tournament would probably make rematches a lot more likely further down the line, which I don't think is a great prospect. It's not terribly exciting to see matchups repeated a lot - and probably not for the teams involved, either, as it narrows their field of opponents. I don't envy UCL 2013 or Manchester 2014, for this exact reason!