The REAL New Trophy

BACKGROUND

Late last fall, maybe November(ish), I received and email from 8 year league veteran and former Grisslie, Simon Smith.  He forwarded me an interesting link that he thought would of interest for our league to look at.  It had to do with an Australian recreational rugby league that tried to introduce fun with a rotating trophy from game - to - game. 

Conceptually, the idea looked great, but needed just a little tweaking to fit into our league.  I socialized the idea with a few captains before our first Executive meeting and it met with some intrigue so I pursued it a little further.  I think we got it to a good enough position to propose at our Executive meeting and it was passed.  So let me try to explain it and how it works. 

First, we wanted to have something to track and be sustainable throughout the course of the season.  We do this for a few things, but those aren't necessarily for everyone.  If you take the "batting title" for instance.  We track it, but there are only a handful of people who are really in that race.  For the other 170-175 guys, it may be interesting but we aren't really participants per se.  While we wanted something to track and keep interest up throughout the year it had to also be fully inclusive to everyone AND be team oriented. 

EXPLANATION

To that end, the Grisslies have sponsored and donated a new trophy & award called "The Beer Cup".  The 'competition' for The Beer Cup will commence on the opening night of the season in the game between last years finalists, The Brew Jays and The Beer Bros.  The winner of the opening night affair will be the custodians of The Beer Cup.  Their award will be a T-Shirt which will look something like this:

The winner of the game will take the shirt and the captains will sign and date the back of it and take it to their next game.  Simple. 

The defending captains at their next game, which could be the next day or the next week will now have to win that game to retain the shirt or it will transfer to their new opponents.  Again, the winning captains will sign, date and bring it to their next game.  The team that is the current custodian of The Beer Cup will be reported weekly in the BLOG.  Some weeks it'll be played for once, but its possible that it could change hands as many as 3 times in a week. 

How long you retain it doesn't matter.  How many times you win it doesn't matter.  What does matter is who owns it at the end of the year. 

So you could be in the midst of a terrible year from a win / loss perspective or personally from a batting or fielding perspective.  But you would have the same opportunity to win this coveted award as everyone else.  By the luck of the schedule and who happenes to be the custodian of the shirt in the last couple of weeks of the season, your team could find themselves needing only a single victory to win the award or a perhaps a second 'upset' win to retain it when all is said and done. 

So what does that get you?  Well, its gets the t-shirt, but its hard to split that 12 ways.  So the Grisslies are donating a REAL trophy to go along the shirt.  We're still fighting, ummm, I mean discussing what the final trophy will look like.  However, there are 15 teams with equal opportunity to be the 1st to have their names engraved on the trophy and perhaps as importantly, the league has agreed to donate a beer ticket at the year end banquet for each member of the winning Beer Cup team. 

Now, despite this being published on April 1st, this is very much a real story.  Also, despite it being published by me and on this BLOG, it remains, very much a real story. 

We really hope everyone has fun with this in the spirit of our league. 

Throughout this edition you will see some ideas for the trophy that we're kicking around.  Its early stages but we hope to pick something and have it purchased by the time the Help The Kids Play tournament comes around.    Comments and suggestions are of course welcomed.  And big thanks to Simon Smith for getting the ball rolling on this idea.