Allocation of University Indoor Nationals spots by region, 2014-15



Men's Div 1:

Scotland + NI - 5

North East + North West - 3

Yorkshire + East Midlands - 2

East + London - 2

South East - 2

South West - 3

West Midlands + Wales - 3



Men's Div 2:

Scotland + NI - 2

North East + North West - 2

Yorkshire + East Midlands - 3

East + London - 2

South East - 3

South West - 2

West Midlands + Wales - 2



Womens:

Scotland: 5

North : 6

West : 4

East : 5



Mixed Div 1:

Scotland + NI - 2

North East + North West - 2

Yorkshire + East Midlands - 5

East + London - 2

South East - 4

South West - 3

West Midlands + Wales - 2



Mixed Div 2:

Scotland + NI - 3

North East + North West - 2

Yorkshire + East Midlands - 2

East + London - 2

South East - 2

South West - 2

West Midlands + Wales - 3



For now, these are simply based on the finishing positions last year. For Mixed and Women's, it is the distribution of the new regions which matches the allocation of the old regions last year - i.e. the teams at nationals last year earned a spot for their 'new' region. (This seems odd. But remember that last year's regions were different, and that therefore teams who made nationals had beaten teams who are now in other regions to qualify - meaning there is a logic to using the qualifiers from last year. They did earn a spot against other-region teams; it's not that their spots were just allocated.)



For Men's it is the new region of last year's top 20, so everyone in Div 1, plus the top 4 in Div 2 - meaning this is even fairer, since all regions had a fair shot at getting into the Div 2 top 4. Whilst it is mad that Scotland had 5 in the top 20, they also had 21st and 24th so it's hard to argue. Four-year degrees and bad weather win at indoors it seems... Still, the fact that some Scottish qualifiers failed to attend Mixed nationals has certainly come back to haunt them in that division!



For future years there will be a promotion/relegation system, the details of which are just being confirmed. So a team finishing in the bottom few positions of Div 1 will lose a spot for their region (subject to each region always having a minimum 2 Div 1 spots) and a team finishing near the top of Div 2 will earn a spot for their region next year (probably subject to a maximum, as yet unconfirmed).

For Women's and for Div 2, a region-strength algorithm similar to what we have used in the past will determine which regions earn the right to replace the 'relegated' teams.

Details of this will be sorted out soon - but it's clear that in this first year of the new regions it makes sense to use last year's finishes, and hence we can announce this allocation while we continue to work on the details for the future.