A big thank you to Graham O’Connell for organising and officiating the event. Great job!
Congratulations to the Southern Guns for winning the first match of the 2023 State of Origin series 18-16. They started off well in the teams event, winning all four to take an early 4-0 lead going into all of the doubles and singles matches.
Throughout all of the doubles and singles matches that followed it was pretty even throughout the day. With the final five matches getting underway both teams were still in it, but in the end the matches were too even for the Potters to overcome the 4 match deficit from the start of the day.
From an administrative point of view the revised format achieved its objective – aside from one team in one division it was predominantly the best players from each division that turned up to play and the administrative burden was significantly less than in State of Origins past.
And, while the revised format was refreshing there were definitely some minor things that will be looked at and improved for next time. Thank you to those people who shared their thoughts with me.
Feedback and things observed from the first time running this format:
– The order of players in the teams event should be randomised, at least in the second round, so that it isn’t always the Super League players who get to play two frames if the match doesn’t go the full distance.
– For the Doubles and the Singles I will pre-set the playing times at the start of the day next round. I will also look at changing the order of play of the sessions. This will deal with a couple of issues
— Players won’t have an excessive break between their teams match and their first singles/doubles match. Where a break is necessary you will know beforehand so you can do lunch/smoke/beer/whatever
— Players won’t play the same person in their singles match as they played in the teams event
– Players indicated that the teams event at the start of the day could be replicated so that you end up playing like a round robin of teams matches against the other teams. This would help keep the North/South together instead of the individuality of the other matches.
– We ended up finishing a little earlier than expected, so schedule seems OK otherwise.
See the following links to see the full results in PoolStat.
