The quality of some recent question sets that have been played in the MQL has precipitated a lot of comment, the MQL Council intends to address this problem at the earliest opportunity. Firstly a little background, you may be aware that MQL is obliged to supply sets to cover matches on Mondays and Tuesdays for a total of 26 weeks, this was previously done by separating the six areas into two groups of three and sets being provided by one group to be played in the other necessitating a total of 104 sets (26*2*2). This would mean that every area would need to produce eighteen sets each to cover these requirements. Currently sets written by certain areas (Liverpool, Northern and Warrington) can be used more widely as all Liverpool teams play on Mondays which means that their sets can be used in all areas for Tuesday matches, similarly for Warrington whose teams all play on Tuesdays. Northern have only two Tuesday teams so by careful fixture planning nearly half of the Tuesdays can be kept free allowing their sets to be used in all areas. This arrangement has allowed us to reduce the question setting requirement to approximately twelve or thirteen sets per area, however it can quickly be seen that this number is a problem for some areas as they have lost a large number of teams in the last few years such that they are required to supply more sets than they have teams. The question is; Where do we go from here? There are several alternatives, here are a few;
- If we reduce the number of sets required then quality should improve (discuss?) How do we do that? Removing the option to play on either Monday or Tuesday evening immediately halves the number needed if we go back to the original system of half the areas supplying the other half. Shared venues causes a big problem if this is adopted as fewer and fewer pubs and clubs are now suitable for an MQL style quiz.
- If more areas become more Monday/Tuesday dominant then fixtures could be arranged to leave blank weeks
- We buy question sets from outside the league. Obviously added expense, how much would it cost for 52 sets? What do we do about President’s Trophy and Shield plus Merseyside Challenge Cup, Feeny, Rendon and Mimir competitions? Do we buy sets in for those too? Are we guaranteed to get better quality? We may just swap a problem of our own for an expensive one. We are currently looking at the possibility of electronic distribution of question sets as this will save a lot of money (no postage, no printing, no envelopes to buy) but it does require all teams to have someone with the ability and equipment to download the set from the internet (iPad or similar or laptop computer, Wi-Fi at the venue is not necessary). This could free up the funds to purchase sets.
- We set up a group of question setters of known quality and they provide the sets we need. This is not really very much different to what we do at present, areas tend to collect in sets then play, amend, blend etc. The responsibility usually falling on a few.
- Recommendations are made to teams as to what sort of questions should be included, what should definitely not be included, play sets before they are submitted, would you really like to play on the set that you are submitting? It’s no good sending in a really difficult and obscure set just to “see how they like that”. Question setting guidance is already on the MQL website, maybe it should be updated.
This will all be discussed at the next MQL Council meeting but if you have any ideas, suggestions etc then please let us know. If we are to do anything for next season then we need to have proposals for the AGM which is in April, these proposals need to be with the General Secretary on or before Sunday 29th March 2015. Send anything that you think might help to Cliff Houghton on cliff.angela9@gmail.com, copy any comments to your Area General Secretary. You can also comment directly via the website.