British Foosball Association

Hey guys. This is going to be a bit of a one-track blog focusing on the issues surrounding this year’s UKC. The forum announcement is here - http://forum.britfoos.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9156 .

So, the situation right now is that we’re having a Garlando only UKC. I have been asked to explain why this is the case, so here I will try my best to do so.

Of course the BFA looked into various avenues for sourcing tables, including negotiating with Dennis and potentially with LibertyGames who now stock Fireball tables. However, as I’m sure many of you are aware of; the obvious source is from Foosball UK. As Jonathan explained on our forum, they made an offer, at cost, of around £600 for 4x tables.

Here we’re going to have to go off on a bit of a tangent to have a fuller understanding of the situation here.

With a reasonably well attended UKC 4x tables, which would no doubt be selected by a number of players, would be a challenge to run. The last UKC I remember with ‘limited’ tables available was 2009 – with 2x Bonzinis, and I believe 5x Robertos. Here OS and OD ran on separate days, yet the OS final ran over to the Sunday. With a 1 day UKC this is not an option. With all events on one day this adds to the scheduling pressure. Also, a major complaint of last year was that the loser’s bracket of events used a 3.5 format which was deemed too short for the later round matches. We have addressed that with having 5.5 throughout this year. This does increase game time however.
Now hopefully you can see with all of these factors it would be very hard to run this event with only 4x Fireball tables available. Formats would have to be cut, all events would have to be made exclusive and we would be in line for a very late finish.
I very much feel that to run the tournament well a higher number of tables would be needed. This is one reason for going for Garlando only table choice.

To make the Garlando tables available the committee sorts out transport through van hire for the weekend. The tables are stored just outside of Liverpool, so the costs to get them down to Bristol and back up do run into the several hundreds.

The question was is it worth spending significant amounts of money on something that will only make running the tournament harder? Is it worth that extra £600ish for those 4x tables.

Our financial situation is the next issue. I’ll be open here; the BFA is not in the best financial position. There is so much I would like to do, but I am ever aware of the associated costs. When I took over as Chairman in February we had a statement of our accounts – it stood at £400. This was a very worrying time. In fact private conversations happened between me and 1 or 2 others about the possibility of selling our assets, or borrowing money, to stop ourselves from going bankrupt. The only real assets we have are our tables, and seeing as we have provides the tables for all but 2 tournaments in the last 2 years, you can see what a catastrophic effect this could have on the professional game in this country.
This came about as a result of decisions made by previous committees, namely placing the BFA under 2 heavy financial burdens – the Tornado table scheme and the storage + delivery company used for the tables. These were large costs that we were never able to match with revenue, and in my opinion, were foolhardy to enter into (but that is the past now). Not being able to reach these costs was due to a number of factors; the near disappearance of corporate events for 2 years (which had always been the BFA’s main source of income), dwindling tournament attendances and several others.
This basically resulted in the BFA losing thousands.
We are in a better financial position now, due to significant cost cutting, and the hard work put in through our commercial sector.
But my time, stepping into this financial worry for the BFA, has made me very cautious when it comes to our finances. Of course the BFA should spend all we have on securing our future and the development of the game in this country.

This brings us back to one of Jonathan’s quotes on the forum - “The price was deemed to be too expensive to justify given that only a very small number of attendees would be at the UKC and the cost to the BFA's budget would be significant - this would probably represent a mis-use of funds on the BFA's part”.

Now on to a point raised on the forum – why haven’t we asked to borrow tables from our players? It is a sign of the brilliant nature of many of our players that many did offer to lend us their personal tables so we could have Fireballs at the UKC.
Through past experiences though, I am acutely aware of the risks of doing this. Tables do get damaged at tournaments, there seems to be little escaping that. At the previous 2 UKC’s tables not belonging to the BFA have been damaged, and we have had to pay fairly large costs for this damage. I just hate the idea of risking damage to anyone’s tables, the hassle for both parties to fix this and potential costs.
We also come back to the number of required tables to run things ‘properly’. Could we have borrowed 6/7 tables? Unlikely. And no doubt a logistical nightmare if possible, with also the increased probability of damage to at least 1 of the tables.
It really is a lovely, and at 1st thoughts ideal, solution. But experience tells me that it would not be as idyllic as you may 1st think.

I do know, and empathise, that only having Garlando tables available is not ideal. In taking over as chairman I have always wanted to do all I can for all of our players, and this UKC , as it stands, has failed in that. However, I hope you all can understand that I believe this course to be in the best interests of the BFA as a whole. We have so much more available to us than so many of the other federations around the world. I want to both appreciate and protect what we have, and build on it. Not risk it. These are my feelings and rational behind the committee taking the decisions that we did. I do welcome comments relating to this issue.

I really will strive to deliver the best UKC we can in these circumstances.

Joe.