Tuesday, January 31st 2012
In the past, when teams are short of players, we’ve allowed and encouraged teams to ‘borrow’ players from other teams. This is something that has taken place since we started. Recently, this ‘guest player rule’ has taken up a lot of discussion time at committee meetings.
This week, we are trying to convey to players the team overseer’s thinking behind the rule and what we’ve had to think about as a committee.
The Advantages
Allowing ‘guest’ players has a number of advantages.
It has enabled the players in the different teams to get to know one another and helps us in a bid to avoid any unhealthy ‘tribalism’ that can spring up when teams play each other.
It has also helped us to avoid cancelling matches at the last minute because a team couldn’t get enough players together to fulfil a fixture. This has saved teams the cost of having to pay for cancelled pitch hire, whilst ensuring that the players get a regular game of football.
The Problems
However, allowing guest players has also brought its problems too.
It is possible for a team who are short of players, with the help of guest players, to actually end up fielding a stronger team than they would normally be able to. This has been the main problem.
There is always the temptation for a team to get a couple of strong guest players into their squad for a tough game. It’s possible that players can offer to act as guest players for teams who are playing their closest rivals.
The Current Ruling
For these reasons, this season we decided to make some changes to the guest player rule. If a team needed to borrow players they could continue to do so, but, to ensure that they were not fielding a stronger team, they must play with a player less than their opponents.
If a team breaks this rule they are liable to a penalty -
It’s preferable though, if the two team overseers can make a gentleman’s agreement about this prior to the game and ignore the ‘penalty’ so long as they are both happy that there is no advantage being gained by the team using guest players.
At the end of the day, our aim is to be as fair as possible whilst ensuring that matches go ahead.
