North Solihull Sports Centre, Sunday 8th September 2019
Well what can I say? Having taken the boys to numerous martial arts competitions at North Solihull Sports Centre, hosted by a number of organisations; we always come away disappointed with how it is run, how the categories are merged, lack of checks for valid insurance, no age verification or just last minute change of rules. This is even with coming away with medals and trophies.
The last competition was the WFMC British Championships and it didn’t fail to disappoint. As usual the 10:00 am start ended up being a 11:45 am start. My son came to practice his new combinations he has been learning for Ring Sparring; only to be told that all 15 yr olds and under are not allowed to do Head Shots in the Ring. Yet on the mats even the 5-6 yr olds were allowed to do Head Shots in both Point Fighting and Continuous. We were told it was for the safety of the competitors, however why not just make it Light Contact in the Ring and allow Head Shots? Maybe WFMC aren’t able to produce capable fighters? Or maybe due to the lack of numbers they had to merge divisions, resulting in huge differences in weight between fighters? Who knows, as the organisers didn’t give a reason!
What was apparent was how uncomfortable all the fighters looked in the Ring that were under 15 yrs old and who were instructed and not allowed to do Head Shots; not to mention the fact that they were so awkward to watch. The retro game Rockem Sockem Robots comes to mind!
Going back to the numbers, the competition was titled as the British Championships, however it felt more like a poorly supported inter-club competition.
On a positive note, if the WFMC is a new organisation then it could be that they are going through the usual learning curves and can only improve.