Alright just to wrap this up finally... apologies in advance for the essay!!
Firstly thanks to all participants for a pretty intense final, as has been said on a few of the rounds it could have gone either way and it was fitting to end on a tie breaker round which I'm sure we'll all remember fondly or otherwise!! We do still obviously need to clear up the controversy around the invites though; to give some context there has always been a loose ball-park invite figure for NWBC of 5 members, this rule originating from 2 seasons ago where there were also no GUID rosters to work with and the aim was always to have the largest match possible and such a rule assisted a team if they were struggling with numbers. With that all laid out we did establish at the start of the match that an absolute maximum of 5 members would be able to join, assuming they had not played in any matches during the knockout stage on another team.
From ID's I have been supplied by Mask and Nightwing (thankyou to them as they have been a huge help) we have established that approximately 7 players invited from the 55th, one of them leaving half way through and one (who had played with another team in the semis and was therefore requested to leave) who left and rejoined instantly under another name. This is not leaps and bounds beyond the invite figure we had stipulated (some wild numbers have been quoted here) but still beyond the scope and a in particular a blatant disregard of the admins decision by the player who left and rejoined under a different name (Uni was not aware he had rejoined - again very difficult to keep tabs on these specific things with so many players participating). In hindsight this is a real shame for such a final and even more so when considering that plenty long-time 92nd players actually decided not to play out of principle, as they discovered only 30mins before the match that this was occurring.
Whilst all this does to a certain extent tarnish the 92nd's involvement in the final (and by extension the winning team) it cannot be denied that in the grand scheme of things their involvement (as opposed to the 92nd players who could have played in their stead) pales in comparison to the 4e cavalry who were so crucial to the match outcome and the 33rd who made up 50% of the team. It's worth mentioning that I did consider a complete disqualification of the 92nd for the breach in rules but a combination of our discovery that they only narrowly overstepped the invite ruling and the limited way in which they affected the matches influenced me to not make this choice. I understand how my decision may grate with some of the opposition who fought hard for this win but I would feel equally poor about any decision to rescind the score, on the behalf of the dedicated 4e, 33rd and long-time 92nd members who got the team this far in the first place. As such the result of the final will stand and despite the issues above this was one hell of a final to remember. Hope I haven't pissed off anyone too much with my decision but its the only fair course of action I can see going forward.
On a final note thank you to all the teams participating aswell - was really surprised how many teams we were able to gather this late in NW's lifespan and the most if not all of the matches I personally played were thoroughly enjoyable. Thank you also to the numerous refs who took time out of their schedules to cover these matches; I have said many times that these are the most difficult types of matches to ref in the entire game, often prone to problems and difficult decisions, which makes me doubly grateful to those individuals who covered so many.