Well, it's just because there isn't any existing sport in which you can have analogous situations, I think. The decision Krum has to make there is basically either settle for a narrow and honourable defeat, or play on with a, what, 5% chance of the narrowest of victories against all odds, and a 95% chance of a humiliating defeat (unless of course he does decide to take the Snitch a while later after Ireland has gotten even further ahead and it becomes clear the gap will never be closed sufficiently anymore for Bulgaria to win with the Snitch).

And I should also point out that we don't know exactly how legal blocking Lynch would be. If he has to give away penalty throws to block Lynch, the chances of Bulgaria catching up enough are all but zero.

It's notable in this regard that when Harry meets Oliver Wood in this book, Wood mentions he's signed for the second team of some English club. So evidently the professional teams do in fact have a second team, apparently with professional players who get paid as well. Whether that second team actually plays in a league too or not isn't clear, of course (in European soccer, the big elite clubs in a country tend to have a B and sometimes even a C team where they put their lesser players, and these teams compete in the lower divisions against each other and against smaller clubs' A teams).

But it makes sense that in Hogwarts they wouldn't do things quite so professionally. You have a point about the reserves, though. Harry is shown as a less competent captain than Wood was, but Wood never had reserves that we see either.


I got the impression it was just that the six others were still left from the previous year (was it Charlie Weasley who just left the school? Or perhaps some other seeker), and Wood was searching for a seeker, initially without try-outs. Likely he would've done them eventually if he hadn't found anyone.

Which I think is the point - it's up to the captain if he wants to organize try-outs or not. And if the team is nearly or entirely filled as it is, no point in doing that.

The problem as I understand it in book four is that that labyrinth on the Quidditch pitch needs time - a lot of time, evidently - to grow, and that they can hardly go play Quidditch on a field with a labyrinth below.

The latter, I think. In book six, iirc (but I could be wrong) the whole scale of the tryouts has to do with Harry and George being thrown off the team during book five, making it a bit difficult for him to just get back as if nothing happened and just pick players for all the positions.

True.

Well, it's more realistic to do it when there's others flying around, but yeah, true, the practices should involve more actual game situations. Which in turn requires reserves or a second team as you noted.

I imagine because there's not much of a point to having them play each other more than once? And from a writing PoV, it would get boring to have that many matches so many would be mentioned offhand, while the matches you did describe in detail would be less important. And might as well spread the games across the whole year a bit - students' homework might suffer if there was just a limited period of intense training and many matches.

Hehe. Fair enough.