I hear what you're saying, and the variations were attempts to use or highlight our strengths or at least mask weaknesses.

In 2002 we played a variation of a 1-3-2 we called a fox and bull. Essentially the outside mids/wings were not left and right but wall side/open side. The wall side were the bulls and the open pool players were the foxes. The backs were not quite done with the same convention but did have some thought about who is the more aggressive, so they didn't split the pool left and right either. A bit like a 1-3-1-1 where one back would default to agressive and one to being golie like, but this wasn't hard and fast. I still like some aspects of this and for the players we had if fit very well. I'm still very disapointed in how we finished this tournament as we played everyone pretty strong through the round robin and I thought we had a realistic shot at a medal.

2004 I cannot comment on as I didn't go, but there was anarchy among 1/2 the team vs the coach and there were also some significant personal issues.

2006 was a modified 2-2-2. We tried to capture the offensive strength of a 2-3-1 and the defensive strength of a 1-3-2. It didn't work. It was difficult for us to really accomplish Coach's vision here and what ended up happening was we somehow emphasized the weaknesses of the two systems. In response to our poor defense things changed for our preperation for 2008.

I really can't explain easily what we were doing in Durban. basically a 4-1 with an extra player. What everyone saw was not exactly what it was supposed to look like, but i really didn't like what it was supposed to be either.

But like Jols said, in a lot of ways the team with the best collection of individual talent *should* do well no matter what they do as a formation, but I do think really looking at what we have for strengths and weaknesses as individuals and tweaking the formation to fit that is not a bad idea. Radical changes though I'm not sold on.

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An aquifer is a water bearing layer of rock or soil. Aquifers are separated by impermeable layers of rock or clay called an aquitard. Aquitard, however may sound a bit offensive to some, and therefore we will be changing the name to Aquachallenge.