As the number of member IPC countries grows so do the number of teams wanting to plarticipate. The world cup host country will have difficulty supplying horses for larger number of countries challenging for the world cup. How can the IPC best accomodate?
Option 1
Allow unlimited number of countries, its up to the host nation to figure out
Option 2
Allow the top 6 teams from the lat world cup through and have the bottom teams play off for the last 2 spots
Option 3
If the World Cup were limited to 4 teams, the host country could get by with about 50 polocrosse horses, plus umpires and their horses and fields to be viable. We could then have many countries capable of hosting the smaller tournaments. We could then envision a system where the IPC would:
- sanction tournaments between 2 or more countries.
- each country wishing to compete in the world cup and or the qualifying rounds would have to compete in at least 2 sanctioned qualifying events
- countries that compete in more than 2 could use their 2 best results.
- The host country for the world cup would invite the top 4 ranked teams as of a specific date.
- The next 4 team could compete in a different venue or the same venue for a 2nd cup (Possibly The Max Walter Memorial Cup)
- Teams must be 3 men and 3 women who can all prove citizenship of the country they are playing for 36 months in advance of the next world cup.
- Games supervised by a neutral country, certified IPC umpires and supervisors.
- Play by international rules.
- Competing nations would get more points for a win, less for a tie and even less for a loss, but each team would get points that would be used in the overall ranking for the next world cup.
- We need a solution to prevent high ranking countries competing against low rank countries to get an easy buy into the world cup. For example if Australia came here (not to say they would) to compete in a tournament against Canada, USA and Ireland they wouldn’t be awarded full value for their win because of their ranking compared to ours in the previous world cup.
- A tie breaker rule would have to be agreed upon from the outset for tournament ties as well as ranking ties.
Option 4
Another might be a Northern Hemisphere vs. Southern Hemisphere and top 2 teams from each meet at the world cup and the next 2 teams from each meet at the 2nd tournament.