While captains are not required to play people in officials, WFL does require captains to contact players for all team events, including practice scrims and matches. I have also been contacting the captains and players on each team to make sure they haven't been excluded.Deacon Barry said:
That said, no system is perfect, and I'm sure that players are excluded more than I would like. Ultimately, it comes down to balancing competition with inclusion.
My concern with mandating full inclusion was that it would mess up the competitive side of the tournament as teams will skirt the rules to varying degrees. Teams with a few high skill players and heavy inactivity among low skilled players would be benefited over a team with equally skilled players at the top (potentially more so) but high activity among worse players. Essentially, the winner will be decided by factors beyond "which team is the best" and "which team is the most dedicated".
If the goal is to get people into the competitive scene that wouldn't ordinarily have done so, I feel that the competitive scene goes beyond simply scrims. It includes attending practices and having captains ultimately play those he feels are best for the team in officials. That said, captains should do the best they can to work people in to practice matches. While there is no way to directly control this, discussions were held with captains during the draft and captains are still reminded to play their "newer" guys as much as possible in practices. By mandating full inclusion, I feel that players don't have to "earn" their playtime and fully experience what competitive is all about. You also run a chance of high hostility among teams that are going to lose a match because XXX player refused to show up to practice, isn't really listening to calls, and gets to play regardless. The result of this is a degrading of the competitive product that the tournament is putting forward. This will likely lead to inactivity among teams. People don't want to put effort into a tournament only to be tk'd by someone who doesn't practice but gets to play anyways.
That said, I am by no means saying that prioritizing the competitive side over the inclusion side is the right way to do things. It is simply the approach that WFL has taken for this particular format. EFL's decision to focus on inclusion over the competitive side is equally valid. I just feel like if you are going to force inclusion, there are several issues that are likely to emerge that don't seem to have adequately been taken into account.
As noted in an earlier post, I'm sure your tournament will be a great experience for its participants regardless.
