Team World Update.
I would like to say a huge congratulations to the nine players who stormed the leaderboard to claim their automatic qualification spot. To say I have been impressed by the way you guys have gone about your business is an understatement.
The scoring has been superb, you should all be incredibly proud of yourselves.
I would like to say a big thanks to Stu (mightyred), Dave (Plim), Dan (PortsD) and Seve for their tireless work running the qualifier, without these guys working away in the background, none of this would be happening. These guys have spent hours, verifying scores, working the sheets, chasing people up and setting everything up for 5 months now just to get us to this point.
OK, the big question, the Wildcards.
It is important at this stage to outline how we are choosing the wildcards. We are a team, so it is simple our method of selection has to be team orientated.
To this end I have asked all of the players who qualified automatically for their wildcard votes, the Vice Captains and myself adding our votes too. Each vote is worth 10 points, all votes count equally.
In addition to this players get points based on scoring average during the qualification, and points based on experience (biased towards RC type comps).
The bulk of the points in this process do come from the votes. This is by design.
In the event of a tie, the Captain and Vice Captains will add a single casting vote each. It is unlikely that this will be needed.
I feel this process is fair, and will result in two players joining the squad who have the respect, popularity, capability and experience to add real value to team World.
We are just waiting for votes from 1 player and 1 Vice Captain to complete this process. I will announce the result as soon as possible, please bear with us.
To the players who don't make it, I would like to thank each of you for the tremendous effort you have put in. We only have two picks, and the list of worthy players is deep. Many will be disappointed and I can say without a shadow of doubt that the strength and depth we have for Team World means players I regard as truly 'World Class' will miss out on selection this time. All I can say is, from the process we have adopted to select the wildcards, your omission is genuinely not personal.
Thanks,
Monty