14-12-2014, 09:18 AM
robin moore Wrote:A bit of background to this event.
Andrew McClement, Shivan Murdochy, Ali Roy and Sam Gregory went out to Turkey to play in this event in 2011 and came back saying how many new friends they had met, what a good event it was but as they had only four players and not five, they felt they were being consistently outprepped. It didn't stop them having a good result though.
Based on this advice we took five players to the event in Istanbul 2012 (Ian McDonald, Murad Abdulla, Andrew McCusker, Daniel Deary and Zak Roy). It definitely made a difference to have that extra player, not only because someone could take a rest if needed but you could be..ahem.."creative" in your team selection in order to try and disrupt your normally stronger opponents prep. We did well again there I felt and had a great time in Istanbul.
This event looks easily the strongest yet, certainly by quantity of countries and teams competing.
The interesting thing about the 2011 event in Turkey is that it was an event tagged on at the end of the season, the venue was, I recall, switched uncomfortably close to the start date. There were insufficient funds left in the IJD budget for me to to send a coach. Pragmatic solution was to have one of the players' parents attend as sole chaperone and head of the delegation.
Results were indeed good. These players showed an admirable ability to do their own preparation. Belated congratulations to all 4.