English Selections for direct entry to the 2005 Mitsubishi World Championship
[<<] [>>] by Elizabeth Williams
31st December 2004
(CqE Official News)
The following eleven players are selected for direct entry to the 2005 Mitsubishi World Championship:
- Mark Avery
- Chris Clarke
- James Death
- John Gibbons
- David Goacher
- Colin Irwin
- Ian Lines
- Dave Maugham
- Stephen Mulliner
- David Openshaw
- Pete Trimmer.
Four of the fifteen English places remain unallocated and will be competed for at the closed English qualifier to be held on 4/5th June 2005 (venue TBA) and which is open to English players not selected. Additional places will be available via a WCF open qualifying event.
Chairman of selectors, Phil Cordingley commented on the selection criteria and process:
Our primary objective was to pick the best players. For some events (e.g. Solomon, GB v. Ireland) we might pick people on the basis of their potential to give them accelerated experience of international play etc., but not the World Championship.
The rankings are used to give a rough guide as to where people stand relative to each other. Special circumstances need to be taken into account here. The rankings tend to over-exaggerate good and bad performances in the Eights. Similarly, with people who tend to only play opposition significantly better or worse than themselves. If people don't play enough, it is hard to know what their genuine ranking is.
For this selection, the primary criterion used was results and form from the last World Championship (Wellington, Dec. 2003) to date. To a lesser extent, players' general "class" was taken into account.
Inevitably, the decisions for the final place or two become all but arbitrary over candidates with little or nothing to choose between them. Hence the decision to hold a qualifier, so that such people, and others coming into significant late form, get a chance to claim a place on the lawn.
In practice what we did was place people into groupings, which to a first approximation relatively painlessly identified: a group who were always going to be given an automatic place with little discussion required, a group who were always going to have to qualify with little discussion required, and the final, critical, borderline group, which is where we concentrated our discussions, the results of which are published above.
Phil went on to discuss a few individual cases, making the point that results count most and recent results more so, but "class" can be established by a player doing well in major events over a prolonged period of time.
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