Soapbox
TRIALS

By Jeremy Dhondy

Who would be a selector? Whichever players are picked, everyone knows better than those oxen on the committee. It applies to cricket, football and all manner of other sports. It certainly applies to bridge. There is prejudice and self interest to get in the way but, of course, unless you have a truly objective and agreed standard, then someone has to do the selecting. So should we feel compassion for those poor souls elected to the job? Well, perhaps in some of the things they have to do, but there are occasions when they don't go out of their way to gain much sympathy for their actions.

In the past eight years or so, our international women's team has won three gold medals and a bronze at the European championships and most recently a bronze medal in Istanbul in the Olympiad - the first couple of medals as a Great Britain Team, and in the last few years as England. A women's team from Great Britain (all English as it happens) went to play in the demonstration event at the Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City. The recent home countries women's championship (the Lady Milne) was won by England featuring one of the youngest pairs for quite some years. Pretty successful, you might think. The picture is rosy, a young pair has been selected and done well. The future is bright. But all that is dependent on these women knowing their place!

It is about thirty years since a British Women's trial was held and the women were deemed incapable of being able to produce results which were sensible, so they had to compare their scores against a datum produced in the concurrent open event. Surely in 2005 no-one could still have such an attitude about women's bridge? Well, meet our selection committee. They may not decide to score an event that way (although they have talked about it) but the decisions they have made are about as backward-looking.

In bridge at international level we have a women's team and an open team (as well as Senior and Junior teams). In 2005 there is to be a Junior Girls' championship as part of the Junior European Championships in an effort to encourage more girls to take up bridge and compete. You will hear some people saying: 'Ah yes, Open. That is code for "Men", isn't it?' Yet in 2001 a woman was in the winning USA team in the World Championships held in Paris. Three women have qualified to play or be reserves for England in the home countries open international championship (the Camrose) in the last seven years, but the selectors have decided that this year this will no longer be possible. A more backward step is hard to imagine.

If you are a man, you can compete in trials to play for England in the next European Championship and also try to play for England in the Camrose Trophy, but if you are a woman you will have to choose whether to try for the Women's team in the European or the Camrose trophy. You can't do both because the selectors have quite deliberately clashed the trials. The events, by the way, are many months apart. At a recent meeting the selectors discussed it all again and affirmed their previous decision.

At this point I will declare an interest, because my hoped-for team for the Camrose trials includes a woman but frankly, even if it did not, anyone other than the greatest male chauvinist pig would recoil at this. By decisions made, the EBU send messages to their members, more than 50% of whom are women. I am pretty sure the board of the EBU will not be comfortable with the message that this decision sends.

Now some may not care all that much about our international success, although I like to think a triumphant team encourages the general success of the game, but even the most neutral player is likely to feel that this discriminatory attitude is unacceptable. Surely it is possible for the trials to be arranged in a way to allow women to compete for both events? Of course it is, it has been done many times before and it could be done this year at no cost and with minimal change to the dates. Selection is not only about picking good international teams, and the image of the EBU is tarnished if this decision is allowed to stand. I did believe that there were wiser heads on the EBU Board able to see the bigger picture, but they have decided to rubber stamp the Selection Committee's decision.

Bridge Plus offered the Chairman of the EBU Selection Committee the right to reply, but so far we have not received a response. - Ed.