What planning needs to be done?
The ACF will often ask for a manager to be appointed before the selections are held. Since there is no guarantee that any particular child will be selected, a turnover of managers is not unusual. A management team of two or three parents may be wise to avoid this.
The manager will be required to do all the administrative work, such as collecting payments and passing it on to the ACF.
Delegation Uniforms
The delegation uniform is not always compulsory but will never be covered by the ACF. The cheapest Australian jackets and shorts may be found at markets such as Victoria Market in Melbourne or Paddy’s Market in Sydney.
Accommodation
This is a high priority item. Normally the organisers will only allocate accommodation once it is booked AND paid for. As discussed previously accommodation can be an issue, so the earlier the better.
You will thus be asked to decide and pay for your accommodation very early. The organisers will give the ACF a timetable as to when payments must be made. Anyone who does not pay on time, will have their selection withdrawn. If they are a primary selection, this selection will pass to the next person in the selection list. You must remember that by not paying on time, you are not only causing problems with your own accommodation, but the accommodation for the whole delegation, as it has to be paid together. Any management committee for a junior event will be volunteers and are not paid in any form – it is discourteous to abuse them by making them have to constantly phone and e-mail you to try and get the money paid. While it is understood that parents often struggle to find the money, to give their children this opportunity, this has been a problem area for some time and deadlines have to be met without causing problems for the organisers or the rest of the delegation.
All children who are playing have to stay at the official hotels – this is compulsory. The Australian delegation will all stay together at the same hotel. Sometimes a parent chooses to stay separately from their children, in order to save money. This is allowed within the following constraints.
If the child is under 14 then a guardian who is staying at the hotel, has to be appointed and be prepared to take responsibility for the child’ welfare and behaviour.
The parent/siblings are not allowed to eat without paying, at any delegation meals. The parent/siblings are not allowed to stay at the hotel without paying. The parents/siblings are not allowed to travel on the delegation buses. The parents/siblings may be excluded from the playing venue by the organisers. Unacceptable behaviour by parents/siblings could lead to them being requested to not visit the delegation.
If the playing hall is at a particular hotel, there are huge benefits to the delegation in staying at the venue.
Some examples:
Example 1
All delegations stay at the same hotel and then the only choices might be whether to pay for a single, double or triple occupancy room.
Example 2
Two levels of accommodation are available, say 130 euros per night for a double and 180 euros per night for a double. The manager may look at a number of criteria – e.g. quality, easy access to venue etc., ,and then choose the hotel offering the best value.
Example 3
Two levels of accommodation are available but there is an upgrade cost for primary selected children to stay in the expensive hotel. If some of the primary selected children are unable to afford the extra cost, then either the management committee will find funding to cover the upgrade cost for these children, or the whole delegation will stay at the cheaper.
You can take your own private coach if you wish – either just for your own child, or to share with other families. In this case all arrangements are up to you and you must be prepared to pay for registration fees, accommodation costs in a timely way, so as to not hold up the delegation booking.
The alternative is to request to be included in team coaching. Once you have decided on team coaching, you will be asked to pay a further, say, $200 deposit (non refundable). The management committee will work out how many coaches are needed – the ratio is between 4 children per coach and up to 7. The manager might ask for input on coach choices from the delegation, but the manager’s decision will be final.
All children will pay the same amount for a team coach. The management committee will source high quality coaches, preferably GM and IM standard, but there might be a difference. E.g. if 3 coaches are used, there might be a GM, an IM and an FM doing the coaching. The children using the FM do not pay less than the children getting the GM. All coaching expenses are added up and divided by the number of children to get a single per child cost. Usually there is free accommodation and food provided for one official. Where a team coach is taken, this free allocation is assigned to the team coach, to reduce costs for that item. Where there are multiple team coaches, then this is just factored into the total cost before the division is done to work out the per child cost.
Once the number of coaches has been confirmed and the ratio of players, the manager will set up the coaching schedules. The way this is done, is the manager decides how long each coaching session will be. It is a function of the tournament schedule and the ratio of players to coaches. Normally around 30-45 minutes will be decided. Where two rounds are played on a day, the coaching time may be shorter.
The management committee will ask each player their preferred coach and coaching time. Normally this works out easily and there are no clashes.
Where there are too many players requesting the same coach, then the strongest players will get the strongest coach (a player is ‘stronger’, when they are more than 200 ACF rated points higher).
If this still doesn’t resolve the matter, then a primary selected player will get preference over a secondary selected player.
When it comes to clashes with preferred coaching times, a primary selected player will get first choice. If this still doesn’t resolve all clashes, then the younger player will get their preferred time.
Code of Conduct
All players, accompanying people and coaches must sign a code of conduct.
Everyone wishes the children (and parents) to have an enjoyable time overseas and the code of conduct is not meant to spoil the events. Unfortunately from time to time, there has been some unacceptable behaviour and the code of conduct seeks to ensure that everyone understands that you are the Australian Delegation and representing your country. Thus a certain standard of behaviour is expected.