Big Mick,
The thing is that people from the outside are all viewing this as a one-off incident where Dubopov has thrown his toys out of his playpen, and the rest of us are simply blindly backing him to the hilt.
In reality, this is not a one-off .. we have had discussions, both in our Locker Room and also on the Jubilee Avenue forum (a forum accessible to a number of members of the Bluebags team), since mid-last year, once we started feeling that we were being marked harshly in comparison to the established sides, even though we felt that our articles (not just one or two) were generally of a higher standard than those of our opponents.
I was going to quit at the end of last season because I was so upset with some of the marking that had gone on - not specifically for my articles, but for others in the team as well. Dubopov convinced me to stay.
This is not the result of a one-off incident, but rather the result of a festering feeling of discontent. We started this season optimistic that things might change, thinking that our decent showing in our first year would have earned more respect .. but all it took was one week to see that, despite virtually everyone who has now read the thread and spoken about it believing that the Dragons at the least shaded the Titans, we still lost by an average of about 2 marks per piece. Obviously this has all centred on one very public example of where we feel we were treated harshly, but you need to see this as symptomatic of a wider, and much deeper, issue from the point of view of our team. For us, this is not - and has never been - about one article or one referee.
On your last point about enjoying the game, our team has by and large lost the ability to enjoy the game due to the year-long issues we have been experiencing .. being told by others to simply suck it up and deal with whatever the referee gives you would arguably be a fair enough statement if we felt the opposition was getting marked as harshly as we were, but it does not ring true in our opinions. And with no system available for review, we are left feeling that we are being told "You may have written an article deserving 95, but the referee only gave you 59. And your opponent may have written an article deserving 59, but he got awarded 95. The game is about fun, just deal with it!" From the standpoint of most, that is not an environment fostering enjoyment.
Finally, I would just like to say that I am saddened and somewhat upset to see relations soured between some of my team-members and Non_Terminator .. we felt he was the only referee last year who marked our articles fairly (and we said this knowing that we had received higher marks from other referees in different rounds), and he was our unanimous choice for Referee of the Year in voting for the Awards night.
I believe that the reactions from some of my teammates to what was unfortunately a slightly ill-considered post on his part (given the circumstances) earlier in this thread were merely the result of the frustration they felt this evening, and were not meant to hurt him.
Hi DRAGONZ_RULE. Thanks once again for your polite, respectful and reasoned post. I said something similar when you posted in the other thread, and I raise it again because it's such a refreshing change from what I've received from your captain.
The part I've put in bold is what I find to be the most interesting part of your post. The reason I find it interesting is because it is in stark contrast to what dubopov has been presenting both in private and in public.
To provide a bit of context, I wasn't involved in Forum Sevens in 2010 outside of playing in the representative season. When I came back at the end of the year, I noticed a number of changes - the most significant of which was a leadership vacuum.
The season had ended, but the representative season almost didn't happen until Willow got it going. There was nothing in place for the awards night. The F7s Boss, for personal reasons (and ones which I fully support him on), had left the competition.
So I stepped up. I worked with NT to organise the remaining awards so that those who had done the hard yards would get their reward in the form of a digital banner.
It was then that I had my first encounter with dubopov. One of the awards that we needed a decision on was the Dragons MVP, and dubopov wanted to award it to himself. We declined this request - it's an unwritten rule (but soon to be a written one) that captains are ineligible for this award. If nothing else, it robs the captain's players of an opportunity to get the award, and it also has the potential to cause disharmony in a team where the players feel taken for granted.
Subsequently, dubopov didn't like that, although we set no precedent with what we did - captains have been nominated before, by their own players, and it's always been deemed a non-captaincy award. He kicked up quite a fuss via PM that spilled over into the forums. Eventually he took a step back and accepted the decision.
I was surprised by his approach, but not overly bothered by it. (As I said, it isn't the first time that had happened.)
Fast forward to this year, and I put my hand up to referee. I wanted referees to be as neutral as possible, which ideally means non-playing referees, so the easiest way to ensure at least one match per round had one was to volunteer to do it myself.
When I marked the first match this year, I was extremely careful to be as neutral as possible. I 'shuffled' the articles into a different order and removed their authorship, then delayed marking for 24 hours in a bid to be as neutral as possible.
When it came to marking, I could only tell the authorship of one Dragons article, and that had absolutely no bearing on the mark I gave it.
Once I posted the results, dubopov sent me a PM. In one fell swoop, he accused me of cheating and corruption, saying that I had deliberately given him a weak personal score. (Note that what he initially brought up was his individual score - not the scores of other teammates or the Titans. That came later.)
The insults carried on as I tried to placate him and explain where I felt his article had weaknesses. I offered to point out the grammatical errors in his article, and there were many. (When I wrote the comments on his article in the match thread, I wanted to encourage rather than discourage, so I referenced the grammatical errors without pointedly noting each one, as I thought that would be too critical. Rather, by referencing them, I hoped that he would look back over his article, notice them, and adjust accordingly next time.)
What I got in return for my offer of assistance was further abuse. He accused me of: lying, cheating, corruption, intentional bias, wanting the Dragons to leave the competition, trying to play God, and, as I later found out, being Hitler.
Hardly the behaviour of a captain, and to be quite frank, I had no idea where this was coming from. A single mark on a single article of his and all of a sudden I was Hitler!
He repeatedly refused my open offer of assistance, and he did so again in the recent thread, suggesting I don't know what good grammar is. Well, that's his opinion, and he's entitled to it, but my magazine editor has previously told me that of all his contributors, I'm one of only two writers whose work he doesn't need to modify in any way - so I'll take his word over that of someone with an axe to grind.
When dubopov announced that the Dragons were leaving, he sent me another PM, suggesting that I should be happy and that I'd "won" because the team was abandoning the competition.
I wonder, in hindsight, if this goes back to the Dragons MVP situation? I honestly don't know. I don't recall ever having any interaction with him outside of that apart from this one match.
It all seems very much like dubopov is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, which I've seen happen with other people, and it's never a pretty thing to witness.
So while I don't doubt your integrity, (and I mean that sincerely), it has been hard to not see this as being a "one referee" thing as I've copped so much abuse from someone who is supposed to be an ambassador for the game - as all captains are. Perhaps the team and the captain are being driven by slightly differing motivations here.
As far as the Dragons go, I want them to stay. (I've never felt otherwise, despite what dubopov appears to have convinced himself.) I think you guys add a flair and a passion to the competition that I for one really enjoy. You've got quality players and, your captain's communication skills notwithstanding, could really give this competition a shake up.
I hope that helps to explain my position on this situation.
