Results of the poll on how to enter the Ballycotton 10 in future...

For the last week, a poll has been up on the blog asking 'What way should you be able to enter the Ballycotton 10 in future?'

The three answers were...By Post only.....By Post and Online.....and Online only

Note! It should be remembered that this poll is on a website. It could be argued that those who are most likely to prefer the postal only entry option may well be those who don't use the Internet much. As such, if it were possible to get a real picture then the number selecting By Post only would be higher. I would however suspect that in reality, it may not be that much higher.

The results....A total of 169 people took part. 16 chose Post only, 59 Post and Online and 94 Online only. That breaks down into the following percentages...

9.4% of people selected the Post Only option. As noted already, this could be higher in reality.

55.6% selected the Online Only option. I actually thought this might have been higher.

35% selected the Post and Online option. It would seem as if a lot of people are happy with the entry system this year with a mixture of entry by post and online.

I know from my own point of view looking at the comments being left on the blog, there were a lot more people annoyed at the postal only entry system last year. Demand for places has now become so high that it has been like a lottery system for non-club runners for the last few years. It didn't matter how much someone wanted to get in, if their entry didn't arrive in time then they didn't get in. At least this year with the second option of having online entries, anyone who really wanted to get in could arrange to have someone else enter them even if they could not get online themselves.

This year for non-club runners, there were 1,405 postal entries compared to 1,095 entries online. If the poll above suggests anything then perhaps more places should be reserved for online entries? Should it be 50:50? How practical this would be is another issue. One thing's for sure, people certainly don't want to go back to the old postal only system.