INTERNATIONAL TABLE TENNIS COMMITTEE
FOR THE DISABLED

 

TECHNICAL DELEGATE
EVALUATION REPORT

 

Name of Tournament / Championships : Dublin International Tournament

 

Ranking Factor Applied for : 20

Responsible Federation : Clare O’NEILL

Chairman of Organising Committee : Clare O’NEILL

Dates of Play : 20-21 November 1999

Name of Technical Delegate : Vincent BOURY

Report submitted to IPC and ITTC the : 15 December 1999

Version of Report : 1.0

1-Accomodation


Tournament wheelchairs only: 65 players, 10 countries

2 main different Hotels.

Accomodations were OK.

Remark:

 

2-Venue

 

3-Equipment

4-Competition Days

 

5-Number of Participants


Players: 65

Number of escorts: 10

Referees/Umpires: 18

 

6-Transport

7-Officials

 

8-Meetings

9-Draws

10-Classification


classification for 8 players.

11-Results

12-Other Staff

13-Any Other Matter

Well, that was the second time I was TD. Much less stressing and exhausting this time compared to the Tournament in La Louviere, where I was crucified ten times a day by players and team managers…

But I still wish to bring on board 2 remarks.

Remark 1

You remember all discussions we had about the problem of cumulating jobs when being a TD. I wish there will be enough resources in the future to avoid such situation. Nevertheless, it was really not a problem in Dublin to manage the both.

Of course, my results as player were not very good, but that was expected, and I accepted the risk without any problem. Not many matters as a player.

My main problem was about my role as TD.

In sumary, the previous TD report (tournament in June) was explaining that everything was OK about the tournament. Honnestly, it was not. I mean that everything was effectivly OK (accomodations, hall, transport, etc.), but not from a fair sport point of view: In june, there were already some "giant round-robins in classes", and some round-robins of 3 players before the open. I remind you that it has been used previously in Stocke-Mandeville World Games, and because nobody complained or criticized it, Irish organisers applied the same systems at this moment (in June irish Open).

That was even well considered by all players, who had in this way the opportunity of playing a lot, and consequently collect many points to improve their position on the ranking list.

 

 

Remark 2

This second remark is in fact the same than one of the remarks I did in my pervious report about the Belgium event. This is not an easy demonstration of ‘cut and paste’ (I made some light changes!), but this is a critical point to solve for the future, and in my mind this should have been done much before….

As in La Louviere with Nico, I think we did a good work with Clare before and during the competition. Clare and all her staff made a huge work.

I spent lots of time and energy receiving all critics, complains about the tournament. At least, I was "filtering" all that negative inputs all days long, that let to organisers some resources to take care more quietly about the global organisation.

But that made me discover a critical point:

Who knows what is a TD ?

I was impressed by this fact: the role, responsabilities, competencies of the TD are ignored. Not totally of course, but enough so that it is very hard to be efficient as TD.

How can the TD make a good job, when people he has to work with don’t even know what is the job????

I had the same problem when being TD in La Louviere and Dublin, and let me confess that it was really disapointing to realize this: The TD has a critical job to do with everything involved in a competition so that the competition is as good as possible. But I could not do the good job I wished, just because basic definitions of TD role had never been precisely established with organisers.

In a result, I spent many hours trying to explain some standards about what should be expected –in my mind- from a TD. Then sometimes I wasted resources in explanations instead of improvments when possible.

We spent some dedicated moments with Nico Verspeelt and Clare O’Neill about that point, and I asked them to make a report, from their point of view, with the main idea

"what do you expect from a TD, when you are responsible for an international tournament?"

I hope it will help for the future.