PBwiki sucks - i spent like a whole five minutes wrapping every vowel in the following four paragraphs in blink tags.  It rendered fine in the preview but got stripped when saved.  It was so BEAUTIFUL - PBWIKI HATES ART! Heh - I was wondering what you were doing.  I was getting weirdness yesterday when for some reason my lock on the page was being stolen by myself.

 

Guys, let me lay this shit out for you.  I/we shouldn't have to beg people to play.  You can either play or you can't.  I am bemused at how people can still have things organised on Wednesday nights when everyone knows we're down on people.  It's not like this Wednesday night thing is new.  Sure, I can accept that the odd thing organised outside your control can happen on a Wednesday night but both Kelsall and Tim have been 'Not Available' for several times already this season.  My opinion is that if you were one of the people wanting to play this season then you should commit to being available for those games.

 

Organising a sporting team is an absolute shit. I couldn't agree more. And at the moment with so many unavailable and having to find fillins all the time makes it a collossal fuckup and a piece of shit stress machine. And I can appreciate the vent as it starts to fuck you up week after week making countless phone calls to people who say they are working, busy, unavailable, too tired, and the fuckers just make up an excuse. But at the end of the day they shouldn't be playing as we should be fielding our own team. I've only missed two weeks, one to a birthday dinner and I can't recall the other. I don't feel happy at being named. Tonight was supposed to be a going away dinner for a friend leaving for several months but they moved it to another night. Not that I need to make excuses, but only to reassure you that I'm not fucking off cricket to go to the pub or anything like that. Usually I turn up to dinners and events sweaty and smelly, back in my work clothes after cricket. Ohh, the other one was the Friday night game we had at which point i was on the Tasman Peninsula.

I assume that someone actually knows where tim is or what he's got on??

I can't suggest a good solution to this. Tim put his name down as caption. In theory this shit is his job to sort out. Perhaps we need a rotating system from week to week, month to month or season to season for someone to be in charge of making sure 6 turn up/being captain. We should have a list of fillins to ring such as Rob and whoever else we can. It shouldn't be down to one person when they are continuing to do the right thing and playing each week.Best solution would be to name 6 primary players, and if they can't make it, they get themselves a fillin. But thats hard to make work if we have more than 6. Perhaps a rotation or something.

Guys, getting fillins for any sport is an utterly shit job and if we continue to be so down on players, we'll have to work something else out. Its all too easy to just put your name on the unavailable list and forget about it. Far too easy. We need to change this as its not fair.

 

Tim does have his reasons (barbershop quartet principally). It's all good though, once I'm back a) you won't have so many player shortage issues, and b) won't have so much team organising to do. What I do request is that everyone make an effort to know when the games are going to played and put down your availability well in advance, preferably two days. The sooner we're aware of who can and can't play the less likely it is to be an issue, and/or to stress anyone out.

 

Beren: I don't actually check the FGI site that much (my bad..?). But while i have known of shortness i didn't think it was all that stressful. If people don't want to play, state so early on and then I could have time to contact a non-FGIer like Matt from PB or Nick. Both are hungry for any games for any team. Nicks main commitment outside of work (9-5 day job) is his WoW addiction, and he only lives like 1 km from cricket. So don't be scared to ask him to play. Matt on the other hand can have odd shift hours but is up for action till he leaves for the navy. Why did my font just change colour. How weird.

 

Orange is Xsane and was at work end of a long day and pretty much had a rant when I saw my name. Sall ok. Leaving now and I'm gonna be late ffs.

 

J-Dwagg - It is all good, I have sorta been making sure things are organised in an unofficial capacity, but wasn't aware that people were getting stressed out by it. Immediate future plan is as follows:

• Where possible, fill out the Wiki table with when you're available
• On the day we play a game, Jamie will ring around anyone who is down as in limbo and see if they can play
• Anyone who is down as don't mind missing or rather not play but can play will get a phonecall/txt if they are required
• If people need a week off or have other commitments, that's fine, Jamie will organise a fill-in (this will involve phoning Beren or Shadow mostly)
• Bob can take over Captaining/Organising duties once he is fully recovered.

 

Ahh guys - the organising wasn't the issue.  Bob and I (and trling) have essentually been doing that since like season 2.  We have no problem doing that (although as Bob said, if you can't play it is better telling everyone sooner rather than later - nothing shits me off more than someone just becoming unavailable in the middle of the day we're supposed to play) but yeah, the more people that are aware about that stuff the better.  I'm pretty confident that MOST of us are aware of the current team status every week and are thinking about whether we need a fill-in or not.  I still think it is a good idea to coordinate through Bob/trling (primarily because they are the conduit to our pool of uni fill-ins.  The issue wasn't really about fill-ins - we have decent access to those (Rob was fine to play if needed this week) - the point was making sure that we're all on the same page regarding availability/unavailability.  Personally I don't think we should be getting fill-ins in if we have enough players from our regular list to field a team but I accept that other people may feel differently (I know a couple feel the same way though).

 

The point I wanted to make (which may have been missed) is to ensure that people dont have the attitude of "I'll just set myself unavailable, they can sort it out" or are not taking enough measures to be available on Wednesdays (i.e. informing friends/etc that we generally aren't available those nights if they organise stuff).  I have no problem with getting fill-ins for legitimate reasons (like Anthony's dinner above) but we need to make sure we're not constantly allowing ourselves to be unavailable due to things other people organise.  I think it is especially important for people who contributed to us putting a team in this season (i.e. people who said on the wiki 'yes - lets field a team this season') to make the effort to be available, as the decision to field a team was based on this input.  Now this is really only an issue in times of massive player unavailability (like now) as when we've got heaps of people available it's easy to find someone who wants a week off.

 

One final thing is that if people find out they are going to be unavailable for an extended period of time (e.g. Manny and Sydney, uni peeps and China etc) it is nice to let us know as soon as possible so we are aware of it.  Maybe we need a table for people to put down big unavailability periods.  This is especially important information to know when we are going through the process of deciding whether to field a team in the next season.

 

Peace out!

 

I see your point a lot better now. I think the annoying thing is going unavailable on the day of cricket (which I did this week) and then not thinking of what you guys had to do in order to compensate for it. I think perhaps we needed a little wakeup call on such availability notice. The current team numbers were quite unforeseeable when we said "yes lets field a team" with manny in Sydney, Ivan's injury and I assume Tim's music thing.

 

Just to give you some notice, I'll most likely be away for a week in July, a week in late Nov/early Dec, and probably away for all of Jan :)

 

Just my $0.02

Obviously I've been unable to play and hopefully I made that clear enough that there wasn't any confusion about that. I won't comment on whether or not we should have fielded a team because it hasn't really affected me directly. I do feel that people should make it clear when they cannot play as soon as possible and not just assume that because they're in the limbo column that it is known they don't want to play. I think more columns in the table can only make things better so I am glad that has happened. I would also suggest that if people are the third (or so) person unavailable on the list that they make sure the captain knows we'll need a fill in and maybe help organise one. IMO it's everyone's job to make sure we have a team each week, not just the captain's. Lambeaux out.

 

I hope people don't mind me putting this on a different page and I hope this gets sorted, because this has made me go from keen to play every week to not feeling that keen to play, I like playing in a fun social team and not if it's going to be tension and people pissed off at each other all the time.

 

It's a good thing to have it on a separate page. I don't think this will lead to any sexual tension or anything (I'm sure no-one besides me wants it to). There were just a few things that were causing annoyance for some people and we needed to talk about it. As soon as Evan and I get back in the swing it wont be such a problem (unless something similar happens again). As long as everyone keeps in mind what has been said I think we should be rosy.

 

Yep. Agreed. I for one absolutely definately want to keep fielding a team. It's pretty much the only chance a lot of us get to see each other on a regular basis and we all really enjoy it. I mean, we haven't gone too well this season (ladder wise), but I always look forward to coming each week and enjoy both the game and the company. We always put in 100% and are competetive though the ladder doesn't reflect it at this stage :). There is no sexual tension between any of us as far as I can tell. We all smiled about this last week as soon as we got there and all was fine. So I say happy times and I'm looking forward to Iban's and Dabe's return sooner hopefully than later. Antoine out.

 

Smurf: Sheesh i'm glad we have written this page..... NOT. Anyway, I have to apologise to the team for a) being unavailable and b) not doing shit re organising and all that sorta crap (this includes not updating the wiki). Even though I did only mistakenly put my name down as captain (filled in the top of the team sheet randomly one season coz im a n00b) I guess I should pull my finger out. So f* it, i'll buy a decent freakin phone plan and organise the thing for the next season or two. Just dont expect me to listen to your bullshit when you have some fancy pants "do" to go to after work. lol nah, just kidding. :P  PS: I've had quartet rehearsals for the last couple of weeks on a wednesday night which have been out of necessity because i ASSUMED (obviously wrongly) that we had plenty of players. 

 

This page looks really cool with all the different colours. I like.  You should have seen it with all the vowels blinking!

 

So I think this "rant" has been well and truly laid to rest. Grievances have been aired, and although valid in themselves,  have been found largely unwarranted. The situation the team is currently experiencing is an exceptional one, and the only real fault that has been found is in the communication. If players set their availability 2 days in advance the fault is cured. I don't think anyone's really as upet as it may have sounded, and I have had conversations with most involved to ensure that this is the case. So far Jdwag, Auron, Shadow and Smurf have ALL volunteered to organise the team roster for the subsequent weeks until I return. I have made the executive decision entitled to me as the person with the worst back related injury to announce that SMURF will be undertaking the role of sms'ing those who are still in limbo come Tuesday evening. However, this order will not take effect until NEXT week, meaning the 26th of May shall be his first call of duty. This decision is intended as a punishment, as I have arbitrarily decided he has been consistently the most slack at updating the wiki for the past year. Hopefully after performing this [not very] arduous task for a week or two he will have a newfound appreciation for those who update the wiki promptly, and experience a change of attitude. Also he can write a song with 4 part harmonies to lament his poor lot in life, it'll be like Les Mis only set entirely in a barbershop.

 

Further to this, I am suggesting to the team that in my absence (AND ONLY IN MY ABSENCE OR I WILL MURDER YOUR FIRST BORN CHILDREN, TRAITOROUS SCUM) that X-Sane be given the privilege of captaining the team, as he is the only one who has demonstrated any enthusiasm for the role. Auron has really always been the spiritual (and practical) vice-captain (even if the role is technically given to Shadow for reasons of phone-answering availability), but is otherwise unsuitable for captaining duties as he is the wicket keeper and Australians don't do things that way. Hopefully with my new decrees there should be no ambiguity in who performs the ever so complex task of telling someone to bowl and perhaps occasionally having the passing thought that "maybe our fielding layout isn't working tonight and someone needs to move". Have a good time out there and make sure you are improving so that when I get back we start kicking ass again and I can attribute it all squarely on the fact I have returned even though it's a team effort.

 

Make sure you encourage each other out on the field, and try to keep each other motivated, dispense short and simple advice to each other on occasions where you think it's warranted. NEVER accuse your teammate of making a mistake or performing poorly

(but feel free to discuss options for improvement), ALWAYS encourage a teammate for doing something well. These are the simple rules that must be followed in order to ensure that a team is having fun and improving. In the context of the game, ignore the bad, reward the good. The bad can be concentrated on in training or in tactical discussions before a batting partnership, and doesn't bear mentioning during or immediately after the game.

 

You all love each other really, so it should come quite naturally.

 

Mostly it is just important that everyone's roles are clear, and people can trust the person who is assigned to a particular role to do their job. Trust your captain and vice-captains decisions on the field. Trust that someone is taking responsibility for making sure we have a team. Trust will be lost if you perform badly in your role, so if it is your responsibility to perform a particular task, do not waver in your dedication, and where you must waver, communicate to ensure that the team is aware of your plight and may respond accordingly.

 

Other than that I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Really shouldn't be long now...

 

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!

That sounds wildly inspiring Ivan. Spoken like a true (injured and non-practicing) captain. You are right. I never thought about the consequences of updating the wiki on the day of playing. And nor did I think about it until days after this started as being the reason. Such realisations, I am guilty for causing the start of this page on the particular day, but seemed to be a culmination of quite a number of people doing Wednesday updates to beign unavailable. So yes.

Good work on the post too, the page needed some more purple.

 

This is the problem with the Internet - when people get on it they can't stop talking...  Be seeing peoples tomorrow or wednesday - whatevs.

 

bump?