Team of the Year

By now it seems like everyone has a feeling one way or the other about the new team of the year voting. I’m no exception and I think it is fairly ridiculous. First though, let me just say that I think it reveals a larger problem in Danish volleyball: Namely, the tendency to change the way things work all the time, regardless of whether they work well or not. Since I’ve been in Denmark, I’ve played three different formats for the finals, I’ve seen the grundspil change, I’ve seen the team of the year voting change twice, etc… I admit, some of the changes have been positive (taking points from the grundspil over to the slutspil for example) but generally, it seems to just be change for change’s sake. I’ve also heard from a lot of people that there have been constant changes throughout the history of Danish volley. I do understand that change is necessary and that the DVBF is doing these things in the name of progress, but it just seems like overkill sometimes.

As for the new team of the year selection process, I’m fairly skeptical. For most of the same reasons as everyone else, who are these people on the committee? Have they seen any of us play? What was wrong with the old system, etc…

And while I agree that some players voted “tactically” or not seriously, the majority took it seriously. Who is to say that the new system isn’t going to be more political than the old? Now you have a small group of people deciding the outcome of the team, if only one or two have a stronger connection to one team or one player than another then you have a major problem. Say they haven’t seen two of the teams play this season? No matter how objective they want to be, they are naturally going to vote for what they know. I think that is a shame. Let’s look at the board: One person doesn’t even live in Denmark, so that’s interesting. A couple of the others, I admit, I don’t know who they are so they could have been at some of the games and I wouldn’t know. I know that at least two live in Copenhagen so they would have seen most of their games in Copenhagen, where most teams would be playing away.

I realize that the coaches are going to be making a lot of these decisions, with the nominations, etc… And the board will kind of be settling any disputes that come along, but to me that is backward. You’re giving the power to a select few instead of the masses. It’s kind of an oligarchic Greek step back in time, where we need Rome and the republic. I just think the old system worked well, had a few small flaws and satisfied everyone while the new system may work well, may have big flaws and leaves many people unsatisfied.

I think the people that get left off the list will have more to complain about this year than before. No one ever got edged out by someone’s joke vote, generally there were two or three legitimate candidates that got most of the votes and then there were a few dumb votes down the line. But, at least a player could see where he stood. If they missed by a couple of votes, they missed by a couple votes, not much to do about it, the votes weren’t there. Now, if you come in second, you have to wonder, who was it that didn’t vote for me? Did they see me play one bad game? Did they see the other guy play one good game? Did they see me play at all? I think in general the process is losing credibility by switching.

I can say personally, as a player, it felt good to have the other players in the league vote for me. I trust the people that I play against every day more than anyone else, they know who gives them the most problems during a match, they know about the little things that affect the outcome of the match that you can’t really pick up from the stands.

Who says that people voted tactically anyways? Coordinating votes as a team? Who are the teams that do this? I’ll happily state here in full view that if your team discussed this and coordinated your votes so that someone on your team made it, then you all are ridiculous people. You can have my player of the year award if it means that much to you. I have a hard time believing that this happens.

In the end, I think there is space for this committee, if it necessary. But I would like to see a system that takes everything into account. We could keep the committee and the coaches, and still have the players vote. Then we could assign a certain weight to each of the results. More information usually equals more accuracy and the players would still get to have a say. Simple.

Ok, enough about that, I’m not really in favor of the new system. But I love all of you on the committee! And the coaches too! I’m sure you’ll all make the right decisions for nominations…

I am actually glad that they brought back the “player of the year” category, that was always kind of a mystery that they stopped naming a best player. So, that is positive. Now they just have to start giving money again to the people who make the team, that was also nice.

I’m not so sure about the referee of the year category. I think that it probably should be recognized, but it would help if they would have told us about this earlier so I could have been thinking about it during the season. It’s fairly hard to think back and remember which referees were working each match, with the exception of some of the times I was unsatisfied. It’s kind of like you never really notice a really good ref, as it should be, so it is hard to remember the well refereed matches. But, I’m not voting, so I guess it doesn’t matter.

Last thing, I understand that the team of the year should be unveiled at the finals, and that is fine. But I definitely think that performances in the semi-finals and if possible, the first final match should be taken into account. I mean, those are important matches, I don’t see why they wouldn’t count towards the voting.

One of these days soon, I’ll write down who I would have voted for and why for this year. I was going to wait until after we voted, but since that isn’t happening, it doesn’t really matter.

Good luck to everyone this weekend!