That's a shame to hear things didn't run as smoothly as could have been hoped.
As Peter says don't think anyone can blame Sam - it was his first time as hosting and it's more up to the regional co-ordinator to resolve these issues.
Maybe something for @WayneJ to consider as head of the league. I would if I was still in charge but no longer my place to get involved.
The things I'd look at would be:
- unlevel games. To be fair unless it was moved just before the start of the comp after practice, players had every opportunity to point this out and get it corrected before the start.
- players not playing games on same day
Never heard this ever happening before and nothing in the rules that I recall that allows this. In exceptional circumstances would expect regional co-ordinator to have some discretion but should be very much a one-off exception for something very unusual and not just fact players can't make the Sunday. As has been said this can have an unfair influence on the results if the machines don't play the same for everyone on different days. Why should some players get preferntial tratement.
- number of games
Can't do anything about player numbers (short of splitting SE into two regions: London and SE) and good to hear so many turned out but of course it does cause it's own problems with the time it takes to get the games in. I'ts always struck me as odd that only 5 games are ever played in the SE league. With more machines usually available, to me it would make more sense to have more games in the comp. This wouldn't make the comp last any longer as the time spent wiating would be used playing so would mean players could play more games instead of wasting time waiting which I can imagine would be frustrating. Furthemore as Peter commented above it would give a more balanced result where one bad game has less of a detrimental impact.
Just my 2pw.