Nobody Finishes Last

The appointment, award and concealment of last place in community sport clubs

A doctoral thesis from the School of Continuous Improvement takes a census of what 164 community sport club series do about the bottom row of their results, follows the slowest finisher through 5,208 event-days of weekly timed runs with and without a tail walker, interviews 74 people at the back of the field and trials an appointed last in 18 club series. Of the 164 series, 141 had a standing remedy for last place; where the bottom row was held by an appointed person the member above it came back more often (next-round return of 73.1% against 58.2% in the trial), and the thesis argues that the bottom row of a ranked list can be reassigned but not removed. It reports the School's adoption of the Last Place Roster, under which every ranked list the School publishes carries a rostered member of staff recorded one place below the last genuine entrant.

@phdthesis{slop_oip71b,
  author       = {Eskil Nwabueze},
  title        = {Nobody Finishes Last: The appointment, award and concealment of last place in community sport clubs},
  year         = {2026},
  school       = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.oip71b},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-thesis-nobody-finishes-last-oip71b/},
}