I’m not worried about if it takes me three years or not... I’m worried that in three years in will have extended to six years. Is it the people at the top stay at the top etc? Obviously need a bit of luck youth pulls etc. but this is a financial game in the end and I hope it’s not a win more.
Good points Stephen. Well going back to my 25 Jan review I can tell you this which may be relevant to your concerns.
There were 242 teams - 195 were a main team and 47 affiliates. I will strip out the 47 affiliates from the demographic below (as a manager with 8 years experience can have a 1 day old affiliate potentially)
A lot of people on the forum say that the game does not attract 'new blood' but if last year is representative that is not the case. The issue seems less attracting new blood but retaining it.
At the other end of the top heavy demographic pyramid there is an incredibly high retention rate - why would that be ?
I guess some potential reasons are: those managers have invested a lot of time at getting good at it (strategy wise);
By being here a long time they have built up large monetary reserves and like 'life' if you have more money you can do more things, have more fun and be 'good' therefore at the game- (one potential related issue though -back to you Stephen- is that you always retain the funds to continue the circle of acquiring the best youth, hence best division, best attendances/prize money/ sponsorship- making it the case that the glass ceiling might be higher than is beneficial for the game to thrive as a whole ( re: 92% Top 50 = 3 years or more years in the game - average time 6.7 years)
They enjoy the 'mode' of the game that has built up in that time - the banter/the official forum etc.;
At the top you also get a lot more bang for your buck (or £20!) If you look at the 23 teams involved in the NAT management set up the average manager age is getting onto 6 and a half years . It makes sense of course because you need some level of skill before you can consider national management . Might it though reflect the voting block of older teams who can pass around the jobs, secure of a large percentage of those who are entitled to vote and (actually even more so), understand how it works (there does not seem to be a great job done of educating new managers on the NAT set up or specifically the elections - this time for example it was rushed through at the last moment with a yellow sticky that did little to explain what is going on for newcomers). I wonder how many votes were actually cast and the average age of management time of those casting them?
Per Jan 25 Number of teams (by manager join date. [exc. affiliates])
0-1 54
1-2 33
2-3 16
3-4 8
4-5 15
5-6 12
6-7 7
7-8 17
8 - 8 1/2 33 !
You cannot say that last year is representative of all the previous 8 years but clearly you get a big burn after 1 year. Not surprising, I mean we all see teams that join and never touch their team again until they go bot. But then by and large after the 'burn' in years 0-2 things stay constant ... except at the top. We do not know how many teams originally joined in the first year but it seems about 41 teams remain from the first year of stumped 8.5 years later - quite amazing if you look at the retain figures y-o-y between 2 to 7 years.
Not to say it is a bad thing - from one side of the coin you wish people to stay , people to be good at the game, and enjoy what they do. and surprise surprise if people like something, and are good at it and become part of the machine they tend to stay more than those who don't like, aren't good and are transitory to the game.
If Stumped did want more managers and to fill those BOT spaces (which *****'s brilliant amalagamation post discusses) with real teams then I think the two things to focus on are 'create footfall' - more teams coming in. then two nurture the green shoots - you would want to help and assist those 54 teams and try and identify by keeping tabs on them what they are enjoying , what not - not only so you can increase retention rate in the short term but also in the medium term identify recurring issues that led teams to leave (rather than it being mere supposition) and go about correcting them.
Keeping 25 teams a year would slowly melt away the % impact of having 50 teams of over 7 years experience balanced on top
ZCC have the squad to do it, and made it back up to T20 Div 1 last season, but mainly because I spent a lot of those early savings on some great talent. We're broke now and the next gen isn't as talented, so it's time to knuckle down, consolidate and hope we can build some financial stability before attempting another crack at Div 1.