Forum

if you take that stance, wildcards shouldn’t be allowed at all. Makes no sense to have inconsistent rules, either let all games be wildcarded or none.

Quoted from Monkeh

That doesn’t work though as a team of douches sat in second place could refuse all attempts at scheduling from their week 7 opponents sat in third so they both get nil points and second gets promoted without playing that crucial last match.

I still think cases like this should be looked at on a case by case basis, if someone is blatantly avoiding the scheduling, there should be admin intervention. I’m currently working on a proposal for how to determine the default winner in this sort of situation if a default date isn’t given.

That’s why you adopt the system I mentioned previously, or a slightly modified version of it, like:

If a wildcard is taken in week 7, then both teams must mention their availability for the next week.

The match date is then set to the first day that both teams agree on.

If neither of the team’s availability schedule matches each other, then the team who is available the most, will have their first available date selected as the final match date. If both teams are unavailable for the entire duration of the following week, then the match result is nulled.

This prevents teams from faking that they are available, because if they aren’t, then their match gets scheduled automatically if it matches their opponents dates.

This prevents teams from faking that they are unavailable, because they would end up with less availability than their opponents, resulting in their opponents getting the first choice which would mean the match is played anyway.

This prevents teams from outright refusing to play, unless their opponents did the same, because the match would either happen, or both teams would get 0-0.

It’s just a bit stupid that wildcards exist for the whole season, to avoid situations where a small incidents of unavailability, such as net going down for 30 minutes or a powercut, would result in a default for one team, but then they get removed for the last week unless the opposing team agrees to it, at a point in the league when teams can see their potential final standings, and make a decision based entirely on that (“Oh, if we lose, we get relegated, and since it’s entirely up to us, we might as well do that”).

I know for sure if I was in that position, I’d definitely consider taking a default, especially in the prem, where a single win in the playoff stages can result in obtaining some sort of prize money or hardware prize.

Ye the current system is flawed. I like ETF2L sticking to their guns as far as enforcing the rules, but for next season I think some minor changes are needed. If there’s going to be a catch-up week, then two things need to happen:
1. It needs to be confirmed before the season begins, not a week before the week itself.
2. It should be treated as part of the regular season (meaning wildcard and extension rules remain intact for this week).

#1 is important because I assume the reason the rules are different for catch-up week is because teams aren’t obligated to play during that week, as they may have made plans for their teams season to end by this point (or at least, this is what I assume).

Also, I think there is still an issue with the default date rule. I like the fact you cannot request an extension if you get assigned a default date, but it’s not particularly pragmatic to assign them on a thursday night. I appreciate the reasons for this, but something doesn’t quite add up still as it seems more than reasonable to assume that a lot of teams won’t be able to plan that far ahead. I’m not sure what the ideal solution would be, perhaps having the game week return to running monday-sunday would help but that comes with its own batch of inadequacies.