NZI Season 28 Signups

Alrighty guys - lets give this another whack.  As ever I'm trying to fit administration of this around work and family but I'm hoping I can keep on top of it.

Personal stuff prevented me from kicking this off last season so I want to get a bit more of a jump on it this time around. ivelostmysparky has offered to help me with some of the administration and I plan to invest a bit more time improving the website as well.

Signups are open for Season 28's installment of the New Zealand Invitational (NZI) Tournament.  Signups are done here.

The NZI is a long-running and prestigious tournament which has pitted NZ's top teams against each other and has seen victory by many legends of the game, including Escath's Manukau Phantoms and Slarty's Magratheans.

It runs in a pool/playoff system where teams play a dual-round-robin format in their pools before being seeded into playoffs for the home stretch.  Everyone will play a full sequence of matches (9 matches in total) regardless of results as everyone is seeded into playoff spots and displayed on an overall table at the end where your movement based on initial seeding is shown.  There are also a grand total of 12 trophies on offer each season (plus two wooden spoons) - so there is plenty on offer to play for.

Teams are seeded into one of three tournament tiers so as to ensure as fair a competition as possible.  The NZI Championship is the top tier, pitting the best in NZ against each other for the ultimate prize.  The NZI Premiership is the second-tier competition and allows for a high level of competition, primarily for Div III teams and teams at the lower end of Div II.  Finally the Emerging Clubs Competition is just that, a tournament for our newer clubs who may still be finding their feet or are on the road to pushing for higher honours.  Something for everybody!!

Matches are played weekly in the Thursday time slot so the tournament will last 9 weeks.  Teams may request for Anytime fixtures to be used instead of the Thursday friendlies when signing up, but we ask for only Premium teams to do so because an Anytime match can only take place if at least one of the participating teams is Premium.  If you request Anytime fixtures and are not Premium (or you let it lapse) then you run the risk of defaulting if an Anytime fixture cannot take place and you fail to accept the Thursday fixture which will be created in its place.

This tournament is only open to NZ managers but we do allow for foreign teams to compete under two conditions: 1) they will play all of their fixtures away when playing other NZ-based teams (this is for the sake of logistics); and 2) they must be managed by an NZ-based manager.

That all being said - please sign up and hopefully we can have another cracker tournament!!

Pantherus