Proposal for Breaking into Smaller Games

[meglin]

All, there are a lot more people coming out to Stanford Touch games
these days, which is great in the one hand, but can be frustrating
because when the game gets too big, the quality of the touch and the
work out drops rapidly. Here is a proposal for breaking into smaller
teams when the numbers get too big. The idea is that if we keep the
field big enough, then people will have to run more, and will be happy
to rotate in and out of the game. It'll also mean we'll be able to
start playing closer to the International Touch Rules (see
http://www.tumeketouch.com/info.html).

1. Start by making our fields slightly bigger than we're used to (i.e.
closer to international size 50 x 70 meters)

2. Limit the maximum number of players per side to 7

3. Once we have 15 players, break into 3 teams (starting at 5 a side
each), but don't reduce the field size.

4. Start playing two of the teams of 5 on 5 against each other; on the
big field teams should get tired quickly.

5. After best of 3 tries (or maybe just the first try), the losing
team rotates off.

6. If a team wins twice they have to come off.

7. This works for up to 21 players; once we get to 22 players, we can
break into two games of 5 on 5 and 6 on 6.

8. Again, rotate teams after best of 3 (or 1, or maybe in the case of
4 teams, after say 10 minutes, to keep the teams in sync). Losers play
losers, winners play winners.

9. Repeat.

Couple of things to consider:

- We could make things interesting by suspending the try-scorer-
swaps rule and coming up with another way of evening out the teams.
Then we could keep track of scoring and see which team wins...

Mike

[meglin]

Hey All,

We tried this out on Wednesday night. We had 21 players, so 3 teams of
7. Everyone I spoke to thought it worked out pretty well. People
thought the touch was good, and that they were getting a good run.
People were looking pretty tired by the end of the night! The key is
making the field big enough. Surprisingly, relatively few tries were
scored -- people were defending strongly (we'll have to get better at
breaking down defences). So we played only 1 try, and refined the
rules so that if no try was scored in 5 minutes, then the team on the
sideline rotated in regardless. This worked out to people getting
about 10 minutes on the field followed by 5 minutes off. Players on
the sidelines were able to help ref, which was also good.

Anyway, don't be shy to weigh in with your thoughts...

Mike

On Jul 1, 2:31 pm, meglin <mike.egling...@gmail.com> wrote:
> All, there are a lot more people coming out to Stanford Touch games
> these days, which is great in the one hand, but can be frustrating
> because when the game gets too big, the quality of the touch and the
> work out drops rapidly. Here is a proposal for breaking into smaller
> teams when the numbers get too big. The idea is that if we keep the
> field big enough, then people will have to run more, and will be happy
> to rotate in and out of the game. It'll also mean we'll be able to

> start playing closer to the International Touch Rules (seehttp://www.tumeketouch.com/info.html).