As the 2025 pipe band season gets into full swing, bands will have their sights set on two major goals. The pinnacle is clearly winning, or being placed, in the World Championships, followed closely by winning the Champion of Champions award.
This latter achievement is arguably a more meaningful measure of a pipe band’s success as it represents consistency across all the Championship competitions, confirming excellent performances in both MSR and Medley disciplines, and the ability to cope with different locations/weather conditions.
By Ian Forbes
This year, there are exceptional circumstances with the premier grade, Grade 1. How do the RSPBA plan to calculate the Champion of Champions results for both the pipe band and drumming categories?
In a normal season of five Majors, six points are awarded for each win, five for second place, down to one point for a sixth. A cumulative total is compiled across all five Championship contests, with the winner currently being announced at the Worlds.
However for 2025, firstly, there are only four Majors, rather than the normal five, and secondly, for one of these (the UK Championships this Saturday, 12th July), there are only three Grade 1 bands entered.
Very recently, the RSPBA indicated that for this UK Grade 1 contest there will be the usual six, five and four CoC points awarded for first second and third places, despite there only being three bands entered.
In a statement to Piping Press, RSPBA Chief Executive Colin Mulhern said: ‘I will be allocating 6, 5 and 4 as they have made the effort to attend and should not be penalised.’
Champion of Champions table 2024:
This raises a number of interesting questions. Should a ‘win’ at this tiny UK contest count as much as winning against a field of say 12 other top tier bands at another championship?
How will other Grade 1 bands feel, who each year faithfully attend all Grade 1 Majors, but were unable to attend the hastily arranged 12th July event due to prior commitments?
Will this situation give these three bands an ‘unfair’ advantage in determining the overall CoC summary results? (I say ‘unfair’ because the date for the UKs was completely unexpected by most bands, hence the reduced entry, and with absolutely no disrespect to the three bands that have entered.)
And another point. Since both the Worlds and European Grade 1 events for this year have both MSR and Medley disciplines, should the RSPBA consider awarding CoC points for each of these disciplines as a way of compensating for the ‘lost’ major.
I fear that without some sort of weighting, this year’s final CoC outcome could be skewed by the results from one contest in which only three bands are participating.
Very little separates the superb top five or six G1 bands, and the G1 CoC rankings can often be separated by a single point. Perhaps the RSPBA should rethink things before the first Major on Saturday.
