What happens when selectors select teams? A true story.

Some of this post is direct quote, but since it is from my own History of Australian Bridge, I haven’t thought it necessary to make that clear in the text.

In the 1950s Victor Champion, grand man of Victorian bridge, decided that the reason Victoria was no longer doing well in the Interstate was because the team was selected the wrong way.

Note that logic which is still being used at Australian level. If the team’s no good it it because it’s the wrong team, not that we aren’t good enough and should make our bridge better. Please, don’t let’s work on our bridge, just change the selection methods.

Victoria had won every Open interstate before WWII and now had lost its way. The reason it had lost its way was simple. In the post war migration to Australia, Sydney got the better players. Simple fact. Simple consequence: NSW was finally able to win the Interstate and to do that in convincing, consistent fashion.

At the time Victoria selected its team by team competition. For some years NSW had chosen the most egalitarian of methods, selection by pairs competition. It let anybody get on to the team without having to know the right teammates.

Not that Champion didn’t realise that the difference between Melbourne and Sydney was the migrant impact. But still he thought that the solution had nothing to do with bridge. Instead he insisted on a plan that devastated Victorian bridge: selection by selector.

Asking members to trust in the frail, human judgment of a selection panel was sufficient to fill some with foreboding. Champion, however, wanted even more….his idea was that there would be a sole selector. ‘For this exacting position’ he said, ‘I must admit I had only considered two people – Dr Thwaites and, if I may say so, myself’.

The idea had been mooted and handsomely rejected several times since the war, but sometimes people with bad ideas are simply persistent enough that they come to the fore. World War II itself was lesson enough of that.

In 1955 the editor of the State Bulletin wrote ominously that ‘To be sure we have never seen so many old bridge friends cut each other dead, or walk the other way when they see each other, in so short a time’.

Mohl, one of those against selection expressed the case in an article entitled Selection: Power without Glory. He pointed out all the obvious theoretical difficulties of selection by selector and then moved on to express the worst fears of those against it: ‘…most important of all – they want to be able to keep certain players out of the Interstate Teams. This, I believe, is at least as important to them as to bring other players in’.

This is the crux of the matter and the reason why tempers and emotions ran so high. Those against selection had good cause and it was no coincidence that many were Jewish. Recent history could scarcely endear them to the notion of handing concentrated political power to any one person. If the dispute had just been about the selection of a bridge team, perhaps it would have been resolved, if not amicably, then at least with the practicality which has accompanied these confrontations in the past. It was not only about bridge, however. It was about politics and personalities, it was about a group of dedicated and loyal amateurs embroiled in attempting to save a game which had been ripped apart by World War Two, it was about a gorup of champions unable to come to grips with a New Order.

The end was heralded by a letter to the State Bulletin in which the writers announced that since selection by selector had been brought in, they would no longer be available for consideration for the State team. It included many of Melbourne’s best players.

There could only be losers in this bitter controversy. In September 1955, the Bulletin announced that a split had taken place once more in Victorian bridge. Champion was made vice-president of the State Association and his choice of team for the Interstate was also announced.

Meanwhile, a new competing Bridge Association was set up by those who could not stand selection by selector. It was ruinous for Victorian bridge. The BAV operated for some twenty years, its players out in the cold. Lost not only to Victorian, but to Australian bridge was a host of talent. I can’t help but mention in particular Ethel Ernst, member of the famous Austrian world champion team that included Rixi Markus before WWII. Two of the members came to Australia. Rixi went to the UK.

Selection by personal opinion was not the recipe for recovery that Victoria needed. It was to be over a decade before Victoria won another Open Interstate championship.

Point is, this will always be the the bottom line of selection by selector. ALWAYS. Even if it worked as the best method, and there really isn’t anything to say that it does, it just isn’t worth it.