I think it is about time that someone speaks on behalf of an awful lot of competition anglers in England regarding the selection criteria for the 2009 CEFF World Championships.
The England Team for 2009 in Scotland has 4 very good anglers who deserve their places on a results basis on river and loch style fishing competitions over the qualifying period for CEFF selection.

The other two team members appear to have been selected on somewhat dubious grounds in front of some absolutely brilliant English river and lochstyle anglers whose competition results are far and away better than the 2 anglers slected.

Please explain on behalf of the unchosen lots of anglers who are disappointed in missing out yet again, how this can be?

Hi There,

This is almost certainly going to be a can of worms.

However it is one that almost certainly needs opening.

Entries into the English Loch Style and River Eliminators are seriously down and I beleive the selection of World and European Teams in recent years has something to do with this.

I would urge anyone with a valid interest or reasonable point to contribute to this debate.

I would also hope that the debate is conducted in a considered and gentlemanly fashion and I am now off to give it some thought before I add to this.

Best Regards

robbie

This has been taken from the CEFF website, I could have posted a link but thought this would be easier.

Offically:-

SELECTION OF ENGLAND TEAMS FOR WORLD AND EUROPEAN FLY FISHING CHAMPIONSHIPS

CRITERIA:

1. Nationality
An individual must have been born in England, be a citizen thereof or have resided therein for at least 3 years preceding the date of the relevant event. For any event organised by CIPS/FIPS Mouche, competitors must be members of the national governing body, i.e. the S & T A.

2. Recent Qualification
An individual shall be eligible for selection to the World or European squads you need to have met one or more of the following criteria:-

· Represent England in at least 2 Boat Internationals, of which 1 must be in either the coming, current or previous 4 years;

· Represent England in 1 Boat plus 1 River International, of which 1 must be in either the coming, current or previous 4 years;

· Represent England in 1 River International plus 1 subsequent none related 15th or better place in a National River final in either the current or previous 4 years;

· Have achieved a 5th or better place, twice in either the Individual Bank Open Championship or as an individual position in the Team Bank Open Championship of which 1 must be in either the current or previous 4 years. The qualification has to be in different years. (note. 10th or better place applies in the Bank Open Championship prior to 2006);

· Have achieved a 15th or better place in at least 1 World or European Championship of which 1 must be in either the current or previous 4 years.

3. Evidence of Achievement.
CEFFIC shall maintain a schedule of all anglers who meet the minimum criteria showing their achievement histories in the following official events:

World & European Championships, Home Internationals and National Championships

Further evidence may be taken from additional “Open” national events

NOTE: Recent Qualification (Rivers) Provided that an individual has qualified & fished once in a previous Rivers Home International, they may achieve a second or subsequent River qualification, by finishing in the top 15 places in the English National Rivers Championship, during the current or immediately preceding 4 years.

Hi There,

There is also a chart that tables all the information about this criteria.

http://www.ceff.org.uk/PDF%20Files%2...%20SELDATA.pdf

It is interesting to note that the person who is ranked third on this list is not in the World or European Teams. Neither is the person who is ranked seventh.

It is also interesting that that the last place in the European Team goes to someone who is 32nd on this list.

Undoubtedly he is a brilliant young angler who is far better now than I will ever be but nontheless there are a lot of good anglers above him on this chart who are not in any of the teams.

More food for thought............

Best Regards

robbie

Christ talk about confusing!

My thoughts exactly.

The Irish World & European qualifying system was apparantley a lot easier this year.

You had to qualify for your province by catching a fish, then you had to turn up at the TAFI Interprovincial match. Apparantley only 48 out of the 80 qualifiers turned up. ( I could be wrong but not everyone turned up)

You then fished catch & release for anything over 8 inches in length. The top rods then qualified for World, European teams etc etc all from the one match, regardless of your past.

Simple, no complicated tables but then again no consistency. If you had a good day out you got on --- simple.

Can of worms is an understatement.

Good luck.

OO

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Would it be fair to say some people may have refused places in the various teams due to other commitments and cost?

The spreadsheet is miles out of date, when next updated the placings will be very different.

I had a quick look at the spreadsheet a helpful tool but surely not the only guide to selecting a team. As I understand it The Scottish World team are chosen through an eliminator process which is a fair way of doing things. The argument against this would be the added dates to anglers diary's

England generally fair quite well in the world championships so the team selection by the committee must be pretty good. England were 6th in 2008 and 7th in 2007, now to grind out results of this caliber would indicate (to me anyway) that something is going right.

I can understand people being disgruntled at not being selected, but you can't argue with results. IMHO if you opened up an eliminator for World and European teams this would dilute further the pool of anglers currently attempting to qualify for both the loch style and rivers teams. This would also bring in another factor of; Individuals who could afford this both from a financial perspective and a time perspective would have a better chance than someone who may not have either the time or finances to put in the practice that we all know is needed to compete at this level.

I think Robbie mentioned in an earlier post that this is a can of worms. I agree with that to a certain extent, but having worked on committees on a voluntary basis myself I know it can be a thankless task. I guess what I am trying to say is you can't please all the people all of the time.

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Hi There,

First of all I would like to state that I will not become involved in any name calling of individual anglers or officials. I am sure they are all just doing their best.

However in my opinion the selection method of England World and European Championship teams has been wrong for many years.

Why is it done behind closed doors?

Recently a chart was made up to formalise and tabulate the selection criteria.

http://www.ceff.org.uk/PDF%20Files%2...%20SELDATA.pdf

However the World and European selection committee (CEFFIC) who consist of ; “Chairman (or Vice Chairman depending on International experience), Secretary (authority to vote will be dependant on International experience), World Team Manager, European Team Manager, Boat Team Manager, River Team Manager, FIPS Mouche Representative.” seem to at least partially ignore there own criteria.

Now without questioning the integrity of the men in question whatsoever we have a situation where two members of that sub committee (CEFFIC) could and I emphasise could vote for their own selection.
Perhaps they left the room when the vote was taken but as with any meeting behind closed doors perhaps we will never know.

Any way I would like to record that I really do sympathise with the officials involved. They are after all unpaid volunteers without which there would be no competitions.

The only satisfactory answer for all the paying anglers and the officials seems to me to be that the World and European Teams should be selected by competition. That way everything is open and a clear set of results are there for all to see.
After all the Home International Loch Style and River Teams are selected by open Competition.

Originally the Loch Style Teams were by invitation but this was changed many years ago to an open competition as this was seen as the democratic way forward.

Now I am not advocating a system such as described by Mr Oakham Orange but a more serious set of eliminators.

Perhaps the initial criteria could be one or two England caps in order to enter.
Then there could be a Stillwater and a River Eliminator followed by a Final which would reflect where the next Championships were being held.

The top ten finishers could then form the basis of the teams with perhaps a couple of picks from the Managers to reflect past contributions, future potential or even injuries etc.

That system is good enough for the Ryder Cup and I believe most of the Olympic sports.

Success in Fly Fishing even in a team is still down to a collection of individual performances so why should selection be any different?

In 2009 it will be 40 years since we put a man on the moon.
Surely a set of Democratic Eliminators would not be so hard to organise!

These eliminators could be money spinners and perhaps say 20% of the money raised could be paid to the organisers. Ideally these would be the World and European Team Managers but others such as John Horsey have many years experience of running competitions and I am sure he would help.

It is also no secret that the CEFF is in a poor financial state.

The Treasurer who I have the very highest regard for has been reduced to asking for spare items of tackle and then selling them at car boot sales!

A series of Eliminators could I believe generate a fair amount of money.

Now I wonder when the last time the CEFF consulted the anglers.
Have they ever done a survey?

Perhaps one could be done at next years Home Internationals together with the Anglian Water, Lexus and Airflo competitions. Perhaps someone on here could organise a straw poll.

One final thought for the moment, a selection competition is good enough for the Scots, Irish and Welsh .

Why not the English?.

Lyndsay (Simmo) makes the point that 6th and 7th in the last two years for England says the committee system is working well

The French and the Czechs usually come 1st and 2nd

They run team selection competitions………..

Best Regards

robbie