MATSIDE

Melbourne — The Pan Pacific is the biggest event this paper has recorded, and it is on our own doorstep. The No-Gi championship ran on Friday 16 October, the gi championship on Saturday and Sunday, and the Kids championship on the Sunday, all in Stadium 5 at MSAC in Albert Park. Between them they published 584 divisions with at least one competitor, 1,686 contests, and 1,744 entries.

All of it is now in the register. Every division has its own permanent page, every contest is listed by round in the order it was scheduled, and every podium is printed as the organiser printed it. The register held 373 divisions on Monday. It holds 959 today; two of those divisions could not be read from their bracket pages and carry only the podium from the organiser's results page.

What the brackets carry is better than most of what this desk has read this season. Unlike Wollongong, where 186 contests were published with no method at all, IBJJF marks the loser of every contest it decided — the name is greyed and flagged in the page itself — so nothing has to be inferred from who turned up in the next round. When a competitor is disqualified, the bracket gives the reason in a tooltip, in the organiser's words.

That is also the whole of what it carries. There are 123 contests in the three brackets with a reason attached, and every one of them is a disqualification: 115 where one competitor was disqualified, and eight where both were. Of the 141 disqualification flags across the event, 133 say no show, six say overweight, and two say disciplinary. The other 1,563 contests were decided on the mat — on points, on advantages, on a referee's decision, or by submission — and the published record does not say which.

Every one of those contests was scored while it happened; points and advantages are kept on a scoreboard at every IBJJF mat. None of that scoring reaches the published bracket. A reader can learn from the register that a child in the Pee-Wee 1 grey belt division lost a quarterfinal on Sunday morning at 10:33 on Mat 6. They cannot learn whether it was by two points or by armbar, and neither can this paper.

The comparison that matters is two weeks old. At the Asian Games in Nagoya the official results system carried a method against 214 of 215 contests. The contests in Melbourne were scored too. The difference is what the organiser chooses to publish once the day is over.

In those eight, both competitors are marked as having lost — in seven because neither turned up, in one because one did not turn up and the other missed weight. Nobody advanced, and the register prints them as contested with no winner. Nine divisions list a single competitor, marked as not having won, and print no podium. Those are carried exactly as published.

The two disciplinary disqualifications were both in adult gi divisions. The bracket gives the category of the reason and nothing more. This paper has not asked about either, and will not characterise them; they stand in the register as the organiser marked them.

The Kids championship is the one the roll call at the head of this issue reads. 339 children across 120 divisions, every one of them listed with what the bracket records and nothing else: name, division, academy, result. That is the rule in § 3.3, and it is the reason the roll call carries no flag or country beside any child's name.