2007 Northern Ireland Trophy draw

[PaulTheSoave]

Very good point! It takes them 8 months to develop the booking form for The Crucible. Impossible task!

Do you think they would have enough time to organise that properly? Some tournaments are quite close to each other like the Grand Prix and NIT this year (2 weeks between the two and the qualifiers of the NIT start only 2 days after the GP)

[Robert602]

Firstly, I don't think Dale would be top 16 even on a rolling system. He's just barely top 16 provisionally and I'm not suggesting provisionals become official, they're only compiled over a year and a bit and in present day snooker that's not long enough. I don't think an early Day-Dale or even Higgins-Selby meeting is something that could or should be deliberately avoided, and I probably disagree with Paul in that respect.

A 2 year rolling system wouldn't be significantly more volatile than the current system, it'd just shift gradually over a season rather than one big shuffle at the end. For argument's sake say NIT 2005 was a ranking event. Both the current system and a rolling system would take into account every tournament from the 2005 GP to the 2007 WC inclusive, thus recognising consistency, but the proposed rolling system would also consider Shanghai, and the current official system would consider instead NIT 2005. In my eyes the proposed system is truer to the ideals of the rankings, its only relative disadvantage being the practicality of scheduling.

It's still a two year system, so there'd be no danger of a no.6 dropping out after a couple of bad losses or of a flash in the pan getting into the elite group, but half a dozen good/bad tournaments would have an impact instantly rather than hitting at the end of the season.

This may be an aside but I suppose I disagree also that the rankings are there to reward the players. Ideally I think they're about putting the players in order of present overall ability, which should be a well defined mixture of current form and long term class (likelyhood of short term form coming back). Then the seedings are there to try to save the high powered matches until later in a tournament (for the good of players and fans).

[rivercard]

This may be an aside but I suppose I disagree also that the rankings are there to reward the players. Ideally I think they're about putting the players in order of present overall ability, which should be a well defined mixture of current form and long term class (likelyhood of short term form coming back). Then the seedings are there to try to save the high powered matches until later in a tournament (for the good of players and fans).

I like Robert602s idea in general (the rolling system), and I absolutely agree with this part.
I must say however that I can't see a real change in the current system, as it seems to me that the WSA is only interested in keeping as many ranking events as possible (which is a good thing) and changing the format of the Grand Prix every year (which I don't really like). A real reform like this is beyond them, I'm afraid.. I would be happy if they would prove me wrong though.

[missneworleans]

This draw look not bad, hope for an interesting tournament!

[peggy]

I think its going to be exciting

[PaulTheSoave]

Put it on then! Now I have got to browse and surf again!!

This draw look not bad, hope for an interesting tournament!