Well I had a great time at the tournament even if the old war chest didn't get any heavier. I was wondering what everyone thought and any highlights they had. For me the following:
1. The little girl on ring 6 who was about 4 inches tall who won a gold.
2. Steve Metcalfs Kata in the open.
3. Matts Kata in the 3rd kyu 35+ (I'm only sucking up because I need Matt to take my class this week).
4. Chatting to everyone from the other regions and the beer afterwards at the Kardy.
Anyone else?

P.S Matts Kata was excellent and deserving of a medal.
P.P.S After all the advice I got on Saturday I know how Ian Baker-Finch felt when he got the yips.

my highlights (in no particular order)

1. The exhilaration i actually DID experience after and during my kumite bout... (i just wanted to go back in...)
2. gaining my very first GKR tournament medal. (i dont do tourny's)
3. getting the chance to judge and ref entrants and actually have a say in who places. (scary thought but a highlight)
4. seeing a very skilled, yet unconfident student of mine (and matts) gain a second place in kata. excellent work tiana. a magnificent kata performance.

there's just too much to say...

lol - thanks mate, but no grovelling necessary - I'll do it

I had the pleasure of being one of the judges on that ring. She was amazing. Possibly the tiniest girl I have ever seen....

I think however some enforcement of the "2 instructors only per team" rule should have been applied.....it was a tad ridiculous having 4 teams of only senseis. Why didnt they get their students involved and form seperate teams?

I agree but I think the yellow belts in our team would have got a real buzz from sparring some very (very) talented people. I know I did when I was at that stage.
Where did that small girl train and how old was she?

apparantly she's an instructors daughter (?????) and she's 5 years old...

I watched but didnt compete.
Who was that noisy referee in ring 3?

Perchance someone has photos they would like to share? Maybe I will find some with people I know and/or teach... pleeeeezzz?


Mick

Susan got the whole thing on digi vid mick....available on VHS, CDROM, DVD, Betamax and super8 for the low low price of $29.95 (nah.... )

Rebecca that would be Stan. He certainly gets right into his reffing eh? .

I only watched this time too.
Still haven't got the guts to enter...

I wasn't very disappointed that I didn't enter though as I thought the standard of judging on the day was pretty poor.

Hopefully next time there will be some more enthusiastic judges and referee's judging the higher grades and open events.

Now being one of the refs at the tournament, i would be interested in finding out why you considered the standard to be poor????? And the little girl she is an instructors daughter in R13.

Cool Matt, I have a super8 projector...

I can just imagine the young people going super8... how can you have a projector for that? LOL

Hmm digital video eh Susan... gotta burner? beg & grovel


Mick

Well I'm assuming the refs of the higher grades and open divisions are black belts, so they should know better....

From a spectators point of view I felt it didn't look very professional having judges that were 'on the ball' so to speak, but the referees were just standing around watching from a distance and calling out "yame" every now and then, and throwing scores out when not deserved and holding scores back when they WERE deserved (and that was to both sides - not favouring one competitor).

They didn't watch closely. They didn't even stand in a stance that looked as if they were remotely interested. They just stood back and didn't show any enthusiasm or care.

If I was in one of those rings I would have been a little p*ed off to say the least.

Well we are still human and make mistakes, and from where you were watching something may/may not have looked like it was deserving of a point but from where the ref is it does/doesn't look deserving. It is just the perspective, that should have been obvious due to the fact that neither competitor was favoured.

As for refs standing back that is the best place to get a clear picture of what is going on, if you are to close you cannot see if techniqus get in cleanly and effeciantly.

where can I post pics of the tourney here? I can upload some, most pix were about me, that's y.

If you upload them into your webspace you can post the image here by clicking the IMG button above and typing the url of where the image is located in the box that pops up.

ie - if your webspace is bigpond.com/members/yourname and the pictire is called piccy.jpg, either click the IMG button and type:

www.bigpond.com/members/yourname/piccy.jpg

or put the tags in yourself and type in the message:

(IMG]www.bigpond.com/members/yourname/piccy.jpg[/IMG] (replace the curly bracket with a square one)

If anyone needs a hand either PM, email or icq me and I'd be happy to talk you through it.

I'd love to allow attachments, but alas webspace costs money and attachments chew up a lot of it.

Perhaps we need a picture thread?