They did it again ... The canoepolo competition is mixed up again.

Last year (beginning of this season) they decided to go with a very weird playing system.

The old system:
3 divisions, each team playing a home and away game against all other teams in the same division.
Th first promotes to a higher division, the last one drops a division.

They seemed to have a "ping pong" problem. Where 1 year, a team promotes to first division, and the next, they drop back to second. Even though this only happened ONCE in the last couple of years, it needed a change.
A normal rule would have been to have extra games, for example let the last 2 of division 1 and the first 2 of division 2 play 3 games each. The first 2 would then be in 1st division. This is a fair system, since there will no longer be a "ping pong" effect if the teams in 1st are clearly better. And 2 teams have a chance to qualify to go to first div.

Instead of this simple, yet powerful system, they came up with the following.
There are now 4 divisions, each containing up to 8 teams. After 1 game against every team, the teams are ranked according to points.
Then, the teams are divided into 5 divisions, each containing about 6 teams. (so the first 6 teams in div 1 end up in div 1, the last 2 end up in div 2, the first 4 of div 2 end up in div 2, and so on).
Those divisions play 1 game to decide who becomes champ in that division.
The next year, things go back to 4 divisions (8 teams) and t starts all over again.

If you don't get the system, read it again, I didn't get it either at first. It's complicated.
If you do get it, here are the arguments provided in favor of the system.
It's expandable (adding or subtracting teams is easily done), it gives an opportunity to lower divisions to play against some of the weaker teams of the division above them (at least for 1 game). And that's about it, if you have some more, feel free to tell me.

Now here are some disadvantages. All these are from my perspective, and thus personal, so don't get pissed if you don't agree. My personal view is from GEKKO 1, which ended 4th in the first division.

The first, and biggest in my opinion, is if you qualify to play in the first division for the second round, you only get 1 chance against every team. if you happen to tie, or loose, you will never play that team again. All points from the previous round are reset to 0, so that 1 game is what counts. An example: WKV 2 usually ends 5th, right behind us. However, there was a year where we fucked up and lost against them, however, we had a second game against them later that year and wiped them away. We tied in points, but we scored alot more goals than them, so ended 4th anyways. This is a fair and balanced system.

The second ...
Who'll be champion in second division?
Will that be the one who ends first after the second round (so, most likely the one who ended 7th in the first round). That's a bit weird, they didn't even start the season in second division, yet they end up being champs in it ???
No more chance for a second division team to be champ unless they are not only stronger than the last one in Div 1, but also the 7th of Div 1. Hah.

The third ...
Say you end 7th in 1st division. That's pretty ok, you managed to beat 1 team, or won due to more scored goals or whatever.
Now as a present, you get to play your next 5 matches in div 2, 1 against the same team you just beat (this is normal behaviour) and 4 games against division 2 teams ... ??? Instead of a system making the level of play go up, this will make the level of play for those 4 games go down.
As a personal thought, once we managed to win even only 1 game in 1st division, I wanted to play games against better teams, not worse teams.
Since there is also a very wide gap between level of play in 1st and 2nd division, the games will most likely end in big numbers. Unless a team can beat them, at which point they would be champ in the old system anyways, and no "ping pong" would have occured.

This is a really annoying topic, since noone will be happy whatever system you play. But I think this is by far a worse system than the old one with play-offs.

Anyways, I was saying at the beginning of the post that they did it again, so all this text was just an introduction.
This time it's the European Federation who is screwing up.

The Belgian competition takes place on September the 30th, in Gent btw (feel free to come over ;-)). But a couple of weeks ago, the ECA (European Federation) decided to hold the European Club Championships on this date. 2 months before the event, they claim the date ... hah.
The consequence is that 1 (possibly 2) teams will not be able to join the Belgian competition (normally The Sharks & WKV 1).
Now that is really annoying ... You can't just give all games against these teams a 0-5 forfait result, that would be really bad. Not only is it rather clear The Sharks and WKV 1 have little to fear from the other teams (maybe TNT, but that's the only team), but when you forfait them, they'd end last, removing any chance to go to the Club Champs again next year.

The Belgian Federation first tried to move the entire Belgian competition to another date. This was deemed impossible. Not only was the venue booked, the other 25 teams won't just reschedule for 2 teams.

The second solution was to play a seperate competition between The Sharks, WKV 1 and TNT and decide the Top 3 there. Other teams apparently didn't like it. I agree, it's a bit unfair to not even play them, even if you know they'll win.

The current, an probably final, solution was to play division 2 to 5 (yes 5, see previous explanation) on September the 30th, and play the 1st division on October the 14th. Oh boy. 2 times the orginisation hassle. 2 times the transportation. But this seems to be the best solution anyways.
Little side joke, about the first thing they said: "Oh if you will be there on the 30th anyways, we can use you as a referee to lighten the schedule" ... haha. I don't like refing in 3th or lower divisions. Nor do I plan to be there to ref, i'll help in the organisation, I'll take pictures, I'll shout for victory, but I'm not planning to ref. I'll have to ref more than enough on October the 14th ...