Macclesfield Quiz League
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Macclesfield Quiz League |
| Information |
| Secretary's Notes |
| League Structure |
| Questions |
| Money |
| Schedule |
| AGM Matters |
| And Finally ... |
As every League now has 8 teams, there will normally be 3 games per week in each league with 1 team asking questions and the remaining team having a 'bye'.
League teams will normally only need to provide 3 Question Masters, the exception to this being for the 2 weeks of the season in each League where all 8 teams play each other and thus there is no team left to act as Question Master.
I've arranged the fixtures so that this happens on different weeks in each League and by way of example, the two occurrences in the A League are on 12 December 2017 and 20 March 2018.
In the B League, this happens on 28 November 2017 and 06 March 2018, whereas in the C League, the two dates are 14 November 2017 and 27 February 2018.
On the above occasions, the 'Home' team will be obliged to provide a Question Master, thus ensuring each League team only has to do that once in the season.
For this year we will need 10 sets of questions for league matches on most weeks, 9 sets for the games and 1 for the archive. On the six dates as above though, we will require 11 sets and your team will be notified in good time if that is the case.
Waters Green Tavern remains the centre for collecting questions and returning score sheets. All sets of questions must be at Waters Green Tavern on the Monday before the game.
As usual, it has been decided from the outset who does the Specialist and who does the General Knowledge questions, so that no team has the excuse that they didn't know what questions they were doing and thus didn't get around to doing them until the last minute. You will see that all teams are nominated to do one set or the other.
Again following recent years, all A League teams will set both Specialist and General Knowledge questions, whilst the B and C League teams are paired together to do one set or the other.
Obviously we are missing a team in each League from the ideal 9 team standard and this does impact upon certain teams who end up doing more than their fair share of question setting.
The Waters Green Lemmings and the Chester Road Tavern are paired against the "vacant space" in the A League, so the Lemmings and the CRT have to set questions twice as there is no A League team to do so.
I've managed to at least give them plenty of notice as the first time they have to set questions is 12 December 2017 (the last games before Christmas) and the second occasion is 20 March 2018 (the penultimate week of the season). On 12 December 2017, the Lemmings are setting the Specialists and the CRT the GK, whilst these roles are reversed on 20 March 2018.
The other teams affected are the Robin Hood in the B League and the Sutton Club in the C League, who are paired with the "vacant spaces" in the C and B Leagues respectively. This means they have to set both Specialist and GK questions when it is their turn to do the setting. The Sutton Club are up first for this on 28 November 2017 whilst the Robin Hood have until next year to plan for their question setting on 27 February 2018.
Happily, no change in fees this year so subscriptions remain as they have been since 2013 at £50 per team for this season.
Our latest accounts were circulated at the AGM and we remain happily in profit this year, so no increase in fees were needed.
We start with the first games next week and this allows us to get almost half of the season in before Christmas. Our last game before the Christmas break will be on Tuesday the 12th of December and we will have three weeks off this time around before resuming on Tuesday the 9th of January.
The final games of the season will be played on Tuesday the 27th of March. Easter and school holidays fall in early April next year so I've (very provisionally) pencilled in the Finals Night for Tuesday the 17th of April 2018 for those of you looking that far ahead!
Two interesting items were discussed at the AGM, one of which was raised by Haydn Thompson concerning the Quiz League website.
Some 10 years ago now, I set up this website (or blog, more accurately) to record the scores / results / history of the League and the "News & Views" end up on there as downloadable documents for all concerned ...
Haydn has kindly taken on the job of setting up a new website – the link to which I'll circulate as soon as I know it is up and running – to effectively "take over" from my efforts as above.
I will still process all the results etc as I have done for some time (indeed I note that this is now my 20th year of doing so) and I will send all the details to Haydn for uploading on the new site in a sparkly new format. You will be able to download the week's results for each League and access all the same information as you do now. Any comments / announcements etc that are needed along the lines of those I usually make will also go on there as well.
The current plan is that Haydn will also include the questions from each week in due course too after the games have been played, which will save Nick from the Waters Green Lemmings something of a job!
Thanks to Nick, questions going back to November 2006 can be found here.
Most crucially, Nick's other excellent blog, outlining the weekly experiences of the Lemmings, will continue as normal and please do continue to contribute to the discussions here.
Rather like my first marriage, complaining about the week's experiences is often the best part of them!
The second item discussed stemmed from the above and was the idea that we trial not sending out printed News & Views every week with the scoresheets etc.
Every team has at least two people with email addresses now and most have more than that. My email circulation list has around 120 people on it as I write, so a huge number of people do get the versions electronically every week.
In essence then, we are going to try NOT sending out printed News & Views at the start of the season and see how we go.
It will save me some time (and a lot of paper) and hopefully Haydn's new version will look better too – it certainly does from the 'trial runs' that I've seen so far.
Printing your own 'News & Views' or indeed just looking at them on a website without even needing to print them, does seem a more 21st Century way forward, but if this does cause problems for anyone, do let me know.
If anyone does desperately need a printed version of the results etc, please contact me and we'll sort something out.
I would like to thank the rest of the Committee – John, Graham and Marshall – for all their help throughout the year.
All that remains is a reminder that if you have any problems at all, ring me first as always.
I am still just on the point of moving house and there will be a new landline number shortly, so please ring me for now on 07434 899513.
Otherwise my email remains the same as always at mwatsonpc@yahoo.co.uk.
Best wishes to you all for a good season.
03/10/2017
© Macclesfield Quiz League 2017