[mrdct]

I think reducing the number of Zones is a splendid idea. As Peter Gill noted, there are several countries in the world (including Australia) that seem to have an unreasonably easy path to the Bermuda Bowl.

There are 8 Zones at the moment (registered players in brackets):

1 Europe (394,542) - 7 spots
2 North America (158,027) - 3 spots
3 South America (3,860) - 2 spots
4 Middle East Asia (8,818) - 2 spots
5 Central American & Caribbean (1,803) - 1 spot
6 Pacific Asia (52,667) - 3 spots
7 South Pacific (47,856) - 2 spots
8 Africa (7,346) - 1 spot

I think you could easily condense this to four zones (my suggested allocations):

1. Europe - 8 spots
2. Americas - 5 spots
3. Africa, Mid-East & Central Asia - 2 spots
4. Pacific Asia and South Pacific - 5 spots

Each Zone should be required to convene a Zonal Championship in Bermuda Bowl years to which individual countries can send one team, with the exception of any NBOs that have more than 100,000 financial members who can send two teams (at the moment this would be France and USA but will presumably include China also once they get their act together with player registration). The Top n places in the respective Zonal Championships should determine Bermuda Bowl spots.

Addressing the original topic of Canada's qualification path, if we were to assume a continuation of USA's dominance in North America, the task will be to finish 3rd, 4th or 5th which will require them to be competitive with the best couple of teams from Latin America. Sounds like a reasonable hurdle to me.

Similarly, if Australia can't make the top 5 in the PABF Championship (in which they already compete by invitation but non-contending for BB qualification) they don't deserve to be in the Bermuda Bowl.

[mike777]

Sure you can do anything, but why?

When you start tossing words like: deserve, fair, just....it is very tricky and random.