Offer of places for "England" team

National developments, strategies and ideas.
User avatar
John Upham
Posts: 7179
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:29 am
Location: Cove, Hampshire, England.

Offer of places for "England" team

Post by John Upham » Thu Apr 07, 2022 9:38 am

I have been passed an email from Peter Purland as follows:
Dear All,
You should have received a letter from Nigel Dennis a couple of weeks ago asking you to put forward up to two players for the England Trial to be held 23-24 April at Liverpool College. So far I have not received anything from your association. This is the only chance this school year for players to qualify and automatically move on to the National Junior Squad. Please could you send me the emails of up to two Y5 or Y6 players who would be interested in playing then I can send them full details.
Peter Purland (Secretary to Selectors)
Does this "England" team represent the ECF or not?

Which other countries federations will there be matches against?

How many "England" teams are there for Y5 and Y6 children?
British Chess News : britishchessnews.com
Twitter: @BritishChess
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/britishchess :D

LawrenceCooper
Posts: 7175
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:13 am

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by LawrenceCooper » Thu Apr 07, 2022 9:58 am

John Upham wrote:
Thu Apr 07, 2022 9:38 am
I have been passed an email from Peter Purland as follows:
Dear All,
You should have received a letter from Nigel Dennis a couple of weeks ago asking you to put forward up to two players for the England Trial to be held 23-24 April at Liverpool College. So far I have not received anything from your association. This is the only chance this school year for players to qualify and automatically move on to the National Junior Squad. Please could you send me the emails of up to two Y5 or Y6 players who would be interested in playing then I can send them full details.
Peter Purland (Secretary to Selectors)
Does this "England" team represent the ECF or not?

Which other countries federations will there be matches against?

How many "England" teams are there for Y5 and Y6 children?
http://www.ncjs.co.uk/ is Peter Purland's national junior squad.

User avatar
John Upham
Posts: 7179
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:29 am
Location: Cove, Hampshire, England.

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by John Upham » Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:13 am

LawrenceCooper wrote:
Thu Apr 07, 2022 9:58 am
http://www.ncjs.co.uk/ is Peter Purland's national junior squad.
I understand this, of course

However,

What is the relationship between "Peter Purland's England squad" and the official ones representing the ECF?

May I create a "John Upham England squad" and ask parents to pay contributions toward it?

Does FIDE recognise PPs England squad?

Are various England squads for the same age group confusing to any extent for uninformed parents who might wish to shell out for their children to represent their country?
British Chess News : britishchessnews.com
Twitter: @BritishChess
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/britishchess :D

Kevin Thurlow
Posts: 5821
Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2008 12:28 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:23 am

"Are various England squads for the same age group confusing to any extent for uninformed parents who might wish to shell out for their children to represent their country?"

Yes.

Roger Lancaster
Posts: 1910
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2015 2:44 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Roger Lancaster » Thu Apr 07, 2022 11:11 am

The answer is blindingly obvious. I'm open to the argument that there might be some value in having some unofficial (that is, non-ECF-recognised) 'England' teams but an uninformed parent might reasonably assume that this was an official team. The wording of the invitation does nothing to contradict this and I wouldn't want to speculate publicly whether this was deliberate or not.

LawrenceCooper
Posts: 7175
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 8:13 am

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by LawrenceCooper » Thu Apr 07, 2022 11:19 am

John Upham wrote:
Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:13 am
LawrenceCooper wrote:
Thu Apr 07, 2022 9:58 am
http://www.ncjs.co.uk/ is Peter Purland's national junior squad.
I understand this, of course

However,

What is the relationship between "Peter Purland's England squad" and the official ones representing the ECF?

May I create a "John Upham England squad" and ask parents to pay contributions toward it?

Does FIDE recognise PPs England squad?

Are various England squads for the same age group confusing to any extent for uninformed parents who might wish to shell out for their children to represent their country?
I suspect that you already know the answers but if not there are contact details for both the ECF and the NCJS freely available. You can throw EPSCA and possibly other organisations/academies into the same discussion.

Roger de Coverly
Posts: 21301
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:51 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Apr 07, 2022 11:43 am

On another thread, this was mentioned.

https://www.englishchess.org.uk/Juniors ... sultation/
https://www.englishchess.org.uk/Juniors ... -Paper.pdf

This mentions a Junior Selection Committee
About the Junior Selection Committee (JSC)
The JSC comprises of independent junior chess experts and meets to make selections for international
tournaments and for the Accelerator Programme. The JSC use a range of data points including rating
progression, tournament results and quality of games to make their decisions which are ultimately
decided by a vote.

Wadih Khoury
Posts: 604
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 8:14 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Wadih Khoury » Thu Apr 07, 2022 1:55 pm

John Upham wrote:
Thu Apr 07, 2022 9:38 am

Does this "England" team represent the ECF or not?

Which other countries federations will there be matches against?

How many "England" teams are there for Y5 and Y6 children?
No

They often take the juniors to open tournaments though they sometimes organise team games against clubs or sometimes nations.

God knows. As a parent, when my son started chess, this was extremely confusing and a bit distressing when I learned that there was a level of misleading going on. We thought we had to go to multiple "half norm" events to have a chance to play for England, until a kind parent told us where to find the information about the actual federation team.

There is definitely a place for strong competitive junior club teams that go to international competitions, but the labelling should not be misleading.

Joseph Conlon
Posts: 339
Joined: Thu Jun 06, 2019 4:18 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Joseph Conlon » Thu Apr 07, 2022 2:44 pm

As I'm sure you already know, this simultaneously

(a) is not official in the sense of being formally recognised by FIDE

(b) is the organisation/institution that is in direct historical continuity with English junior chess of certainly the early 80s and probably 70s as well - I don't know the precise origins of the junior squad or full history, but it was already well established when I was playing in the late 1980s. My earliest memories of people involved are John Hennigan (father of Michael Hennigan), Ian Cowen, Alec Webster etc.

If Leonard Barden is reading this he might be able to enlighten on how, institutionally, this connected onto junior activities and squads in the 1970s.

(c) is the organisation/institution that has developed (by a long way) more English juniors players into titled players / ran title norms events for English juniors than any other.

Obviously it is not now all it used to be. In an ideal world, and given all its history, there would be a way to re-incorporate it into the structures of the ECF (after all, it used to be called the BCF Junior Squad, until the BCF decided the name was inappropriate).

I think (b) and (c) are more than a bit relevant in terms of saying what the difference between this and the example you give of the John Upham National Junior Squad.

Alex_Longson
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2020 7:52 am

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Alex_Longson » Thu Apr 07, 2022 4:05 pm

Joseph Conlon wrote:
Thu Apr 07, 2022 2:44 pm
As I'm sure you already know, this simultaneously

(a) is not official in the sense of being formally recognised by FIDE

(b) is the organisation/institution that is in direct historical continuity with English junior chess of certainly the early 80s and probably 70s as well - I don't know the precise origins of the junior squad or full history, but it was already well established when I was playing in the late 1980s. My earliest memories of people involved are John Hennigan (father of Michael Hennigan), Ian Cowen, Alec Webster etc.

If Leonard Barden is reading this he might be able to enlighten on how, institutionally, this connected onto junior activities and squads in the 1970s.

(c) is the organisation/institution that has developed (by a long way) more English juniors players into titled players / ran title norms events for English juniors than any other.

Obviously it is not now all it used to be. In an ideal world, and given all its history, there would be a way to re-incorporate it into the structures of the ECF (after all, it used to be called the BCF Junior Squad, until the BCF decided the name was inappropriate).

I think (b) and (c) are more than a bit relevant in terms of saying what the difference between this and the example you give of the John Upham National Junior Squad.
I agree largely with Joe - which is perhaps unsurprising as we're from very nearly the same cohort of players. It felt like a great achievement to get into the "Squad" and was a nice moment for me and my parents. I remember playing a Quad-Match versus USA, Yugoslavia and South Africa at Millfield School. I later played for the actual ECF England team in Istanbul in 1996 - though strangely enough it wasn't until fairly recently that I realised there was a difference between the two "squads".

So I've got huge admiration and gratitude for what EPSCA have contributed to junior chess. I do think the ECF is now in a much better place than it was in the early/mid nineties and I think it is regrettable that we (as a community) haven't achieved a sensible dialogue between EPSCA and ECF on a number of points. I think it is fair to say EPSCA have not moved with the digital times and the continued confusion of terms and responsibilities for parents is not constructive.

My read of it is that the ECF have attempted to collaborate with EPSCA but without much success. Probably the best way forward for the ECF is incorporate some of the things that worked well in the EPSCA model whilst keeping open an offer to collaborate. It would be good to see some real debate of the issues without allowing old grudges to dominate.

Roger de Coverly
Posts: 21301
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:51 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Apr 07, 2022 4:22 pm

Joseph Conlon wrote:
Thu Apr 07, 2022 2:44 pm
If Leonard Barden is reading this he might be able to enlighten on how, institutionally, this connected onto junior activities and squads in the 1970s.
In my memory, the first time I encountered the BCF Junior Squad en masse was at the LARA (Lambeth) Open in October or November 1975. I did not play in top events very often in that era, so it may well have been around before then,

Andrew Martin
Posts: 997
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 4:37 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Andrew Martin » Thu Apr 07, 2022 7:13 pm

Peter Purland and other colleagues on the NJCS , some of whom Joe Conlon mentioned earlier, have made an extraordinary contribution to junior chess in the UK.

Peter has:

Organised countless tournaments
Organised countless trips abroad
Provided countless chess-related opportunities for young people over the last forty years or so.
Provided a level of encouragement and support to young people that hardly anyone in the UK chess scene can match.

Frankly, he should get a medal or some kind of lasting award for services to chess.

That is it.

Roger Lancaster
Posts: 1910
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2015 2:44 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Roger Lancaster » Thu Apr 07, 2022 8:10 pm

Andrew Martin wrote:
Thu Apr 07, 2022 7:13 pm
Peter Purland and other colleagues on the NJCS , some of whom Joe Conlon mentioned earlier, have made an extraordinary contribution to junior chess in the UK.

Peter has:

Organised countless tournaments
Organised countless trips abroad
Provided countless chess-related opportunities for young people over the last forty years or so.
Provided a level of encouragement and support to young people that hardly anyone in the UK chess scene can match.

Frankly, he should get a medal or some kind of lasting award for services to chess.

That is it.
Andrew, no-one is questioning Peter's massive commitment to junior chess but that's not exactly relevant to the question of whether parents are being misled. In fact, such is Peter's knowledge that he can hardly be unaware that it's liable to be misleading.

John Townsend
Posts: 830
Joined: Sun Aug 29, 2010 8:26 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by John Townsend » Thu Apr 07, 2022 8:20 pm

Perhaps there is space here for a quick view from an outsider. As Peter Purland and his colleagues are doing such an excellent job, I would say let them get on with it, and strength to their arm. It isn't important for the team to "represent the ECF"; it represents England, by general consensus.

Roger Lancaster
Posts: 1910
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2015 2:44 pm

Re: Offer of places for "England" team

Post by Roger Lancaster » Thu Apr 07, 2022 9:00 pm

John Townsend wrote:
Thu Apr 07, 2022 8:20 pm
Perhaps there is space here for a quick view from an outsider. As Peter Purland and his colleagues are doing such an excellent job, I would say let them get on with it, and strength to their arm. It isn't important for the team to "represent the ECF"; it represents England, by general consensus.
That's one view although, by the same token, if you accept that John Upham is doing an excellent job, you'd presumably go along - I instance John as an example in view of his earlier comments - with his organising yet another 'England' team.