Recently, the UK League voted to merge with the US League for the upcoming season. While UK and US will not play against one another, UK players will have access to the US dispute and highlights system. They will also have their own league administrator and the vote to elect this representative is currently underway.

Tick, a prominent UK League player and one of the two gentlemen running for the administrator position, took some time out to answer questions about the recent merge, the current administrator vote, and why he thinks he’d be the best man to represent the UK League.

What was your initial reaction to the US/UK merge?

Surprised, very surprised as it seemed to come out of no where. It was originally proposed once over last commish had quit, and at first it seemed very coincidental that both these things happened on the same day so I became suspicious of it seeing it more as a hostile take over than a ‘merge’. Fortunately after talking to Jimmy I found that he had quit due to being fed up with constant arguing within the league.

When it was put to a vote, did you think it would pass?

Yes, it had the support of some influential people in the league and that support seemed to be mimicked by the players that looked up to those certain individuals. In the end it wasn’t even close with around 3/4 of people for the merge and in general I think most people have come to accept it now, although there was some quite heavy backlash at first (there was even talk of a rival league being set up) but it seems to have calmed down.

What were some of the strongest arguments for the merge?

The UK league has been on a steady decline for the past two seasons, and I think the main issue has been the fact that for the last two seasons our commish has quit before the league has ended, this season I stepped in and saw the league out, however Winter League 08 ended up going to on for around 3 times as long as it should have done because no-one was there to pick up the pieces. With the hierarchy that the US league has in place however if something should happen to one of the admin’s there’s someone there to quickly take over and get it back on track.

Along with this the US league system is tried and tested and has shown that it works, compared to UK league which has been constantly switching league styles for a couple of seasons know and some have had more success than others, but all had their faults, I’m not saying the US set-up is perfect, but at least we know it works.

What were some of the strongest arguments against the merge?

I was pretty much a supporter from the start so I had no major issues. However I really did not approve of how it was handled at the start, which is why I didn’t hesitate to give answers when a certain snoop starting asking questions. I didn’t like the secrecy, I understood why Caleb wanted to keep the discussion to UK players but it concerned both leagues, even though it only has minor impact on the US league.

The people who voted against the merge all had the same problem however, and they felt we wouldn’t be properly treated when it came to highlights and disputes, it’s no secret that certain US players look down on the UK league and they thought that this would carry through to the panels.

f you’re elected UK Admin, do you have a plan to help make the merge as smooth as possible?

If elected the first thing I have to do is get players used to the new league set-up and the idea of playing games on certain days, until now we asked to teams to organise games when they could, I think that’s going to be the hardest thing for people to get used to.

The recent ‘Hands Across the Ocean Bum Rush’ was supposed to help out by introducing teams from each league to each other, and worked really well games were played pretty much lag free and a couple of people won prizes. Apart from that all we can really ask is that the forums become a bit more integrated and allow the separate leagues to socialise a bit more.

What other plans or ideas do you have for the UK league if you’re elected UK Admin?

Most of my ideas are already up in the voting thread which is stickied in the Grifball forum. As well as this however, the bum rush I recently ran is the template I would like to use for future bum rushes, because even if there is lag in the what was dubbed the ‘championship thingy’ when UK teams played US we still get two perfectly decent bum rushes out it, one for the US and one for the UK.

Another project I’ve been working on is contacting gaming websites and asking if they would like to enter the team, more to the point I’ve contacting country specific gaming websites. We’ve been claiming for so long that technically we should be the European league yet nothing has ever really been done to advertise to mainland Europe and I think it could really give a boost to the league that it needs.

Anything else you would like to add about the merge, the admin vote, or the UK league in general?

Yeah. Vote for Tick.