bah sore throat and hockey div

[tielan]

Really sore, possibly coming down with something throat today. Ugh.

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So. In hockey, our C and D divisions were merged into a single division due to a lack of teams in the overall competition.

A-Div had 8 teams, B-Div has 6 teams, C-Div had 8 teams.

Except that one team in C-Div is dominating. They were racking up wins to the tune of 13-nil (only beat us 3-1 - I think we're the only team that's scored a goal against them) and were basically running roughshod over all the other teams.

I believe I heard another team has lost every game, in a couple of cases by over 10 goals. And that's really very rough, particularly because they have some new players who are finding it really hard to keep coming back when they're getting thrashed every week.

So they've split C-Div into 2 - C-Div and D-div. We're still in C-Div, and I think we're good there, even if about a third of our players are D-Div.

Hopefully the D-Div will be a little less inimidating for the bottom teams, giving them a chance to work on their skills and not feel quite so awful when they lose. (I know how bad it is to be the bottom team and the bottom team and the bottom team for years.)

But I am a bit cross at the 'dominating team' who refused at the start of the year to go up to B-Div.

On the upside, we'll get 9 more games instead of only 7. But it's going to play merry havoc with some of the women who'd already arranged their schedules around the draw.

--

Interesting. Just got a call from work manager, who said the contracting company I work for is asking all contractors to take up to 5 days off before the end of financial year to make the books look better...

EOFY is 12 working days away.

I'm financially okay; I can take all five days off, although the dates I just sent in stagger it through the next two paydays so I'm not losing half my income all at once. Don't know how the other guys are going to feel about this, though.

As it turns out, I could actually do with a couple of days off next week to sort things out before I have a permabee at my place on the 24th. Also, fixing up things around the house and getting stuff moved over from the storage space and unpacked.

--

Hours later, the sore throat has receded, at least.

Comments

[spiffikins]

One of my customers had to do that last year - their company sent out instructions that everyone needed to take a week off - I think they just effectively shut down the company for a week. They forced people to use their vacation days too - which was really not fair. My contact there, was QUITE peeved because she had made plans to use those days in January - but the company wanted them off the books before the end of 2022, so she ended up burning through twice as many vacation days as she had planned, since she had already booked a cruise in January 2023.

They didn't give you guys much notice though - also, basically being told "hey take a week off, unpaid" is not very cool of your employer!

[tielan]

So, in my company's case, the permanent staff will keep working those days, but the contractor staff are being pushed to take time off.

I do wonder if they're trying to nudge the contractors towards becoming permanent staff - permanent staff are cheaper in the long run, and they can pretty much send them anywhere. (Me? If they dropped me to a regular 4 days a week, I would not mind at all. But it's so hard to find those kinds of jobs, let alone keep them.)

But, yes, it's very short notice and doubtless there are some people whose finances can't take the hit.

[rmc28]

I've seen similar situations to your div C "dominating" team, and I don't think much of teams (or their leaders) who take that kind of "easy championship" run. Yeah they get wins and egoboosts, but are they learning much? are they being stretched?

It's not fun to always lose, but I feel like I've learned in every (ice) hockey game I've lost, even the ones when we lost by a lot.

[tielan]

This team is apparently somewhat notorious for not wanting to go up a grade and basically dominating the competition at this level. Which, yes, is bad sportsmanship. Go up a grade, lose for a season, and then maybe shift your players and drop back.

The thing that adds insult to injury for this team, is that they go HARD no matter what.

There was absolutely no need to rack up a score of 13 goals against that poor D-Div team. Once you're 5 or 6 ahead, just ease back, especially this early in the season when you don't need to rack up the points to improve your standing on the way to the semis.

One year in summer comp, where they don't grade the teams, we had what was basically a first-grade team with former Australian International players on it - they were in their sixties, so they couldn't run, but they could still do the stickwork. We had - at best - a third grade team, with a couple of second-grade players. They kicked our asses 16-0. "Playing for sheep stations" is what we call it - and there's no call for that kind of thing in either a summer competition, or against a team that's at the bottom of the standings.

[facethestrange]

I'm glad your throat got better. Enjoy your free days (even if they seem to be the 'doing a lot of things' and not the 'resting' kind of free days). :)

[scribblemyname]

:hugs: Blessings! May your throat stay feeling better and all the things work out.