Can someone explain how we only finished 3rd please.
We were the only team to win 3 matches,we finished above Warwickshire in the main division yet end up 3rd..?...help.?
Can someone explain how we only finished 3rd please.
We were the only team to win 3 matches,we finished above Warwickshire in the main division yet end up 3rd..?...help.?
It's very complicated, but the County Championship this year was initially played over three equal divisions of six teams, who played each other home and away. The top two from each division then went on to make up Division One for the final part. Instead of starting again from scratch, half of the points total obtained from the two games against the other promoted team in your division in the first part were carried over as you didn't play them again in the second part, you only played the promoted teams from the other two divisions. There lies the problem - the only two games Notts lost in the first bit both happened to be against Warwickshire, so they started with a big points advantage over us.
If that's too complicated, it's best summarised by saying "we were robbed".
To try and explain it in a football context, it's like the team finishing 3rd in the Championship playing the team that finished ten points behind them in 6th place in the playoffs. The Football League decide that the team that finished 6th are given a two goal start in the playoffs, because they beat the team that finished 3rd 2-0 in both games they played against each other!
"Defeats home and away to Warwickshire in the Conference phase of the season meant Notts carried forward only five points from those matches into the divisional stage, compared with Warwickshire's 21 and Lancashire's 16.5".
So despite finishing behind us in the first phase, the 'powers that be' decided to give Warwickshire a 16 point start and Lancashire an 11.5 point start. We ended up 4 points behind Warwickshire and half a point behind Lancashire.
The biggest robbery since the officials gave Coventry a three goal advantage in the playoff semi-final games.
But all knew the rules at the start. We should have got a result in one of the games in the initial league and then the way the Div 1 results went we would have won clearly.
That's true, the rules were clearly stated at the start and all counties had to abide by them. I was just questioning the wisdom of a rule that deems you can finish first, but the team finishing second is handed a big advantage based on two specific games rather than awarding points based on the division as a whole.
It's all done and dusted now, so the big positive for Notts is that this season has seen the emergence of some very promising young players in all formats of the game who have done well and can only get better.