brassstats.com
As Colin Archibald said in his article, the inspiration for the rankings was the method used at that time to rank professional golfers! In fact, a few of the 'tweaks' to the methodology that were introduced to the golf rankings over the next few years were present in the band rankings from day 1 so the BBW rankings were truly innovative and ahead of their time!
In essence, bands are awarded points for competing in so-called 'ranking events' and the points are accumulated over a 3-year period, weighted in favour of the most recent events, and averaged over the number of contests that the band has played in during the 3-year 'rankings period'.
Don't take it too seriously!
For almost 20 years now, the rankings have attempted to portray the relative merits of the leading bands in mainland Britain. Remember though that no rankings system is perfect and after all, all systems can only ever be based on contest results, which are themselves a result of a largely subjective 'art' - the adjudicators' opinions! Brass bands are not like golfers, or tennis players, etc, for which the results they achieve can lead to an accurate ranking, at least on that particular day.
The rankings will always (I hope) lead to some healthy debate in band rooms across the country and if you don't agree, just blame the adjudicators as we've always done!
