Hi John,
We"d like to let you play for Liverpool but the problem we have is as follows.
Say we"re 17 weeks into the league and Liverpool are coasting through the Central Division (unlikely given the dodgy leadership, but you never know 
), and one or two wide boys decide to join Liverpool because their qualification for the final is assured. Their thinking is....if they can post two or three good individual results in the last two or three games, they might just get close to making the National League final team, or worst case, get a decent percentage of any prize money that the Liverpool team might make from their possible GUKPT seats.
Now this would throw the League into disrepute. The other 10 or 20 Liverpool players, who have maybe entered 15 or 20 events would end up getting a lower cut of any potential winnings. Scouse would be up in arms because he"s unlikely to finish in the top ten, never mind the top four....
By taking our stance at the start of the League, as we have done with all teams, we can stop that sort of thing happening later on. It is not an option to stop players entering the league at a later point, but in the interest of fairness we are going to insist their reason for joining any team is reasonably defined.
Hope you understand, you"re a great player and have been a great supporter of APAT, but this is why we are generally respected, because we"re open on our thinking and not afraid to make the odd unpopular decision for the greater good. Hope you"ll reconsider playing in the League.
Cheers,
Des.
Anybody wanting to play after the season starts should be put into the teams with the lowest membership and have no choice. That I would agree with.
Eligibility to any share of prizemoney could be restricted to only those who have playing at least 50% of the games, thus stopping latecomers "stealing" %
I was, personally, contacted by Liverpool"s captain (a personal friend) and asked to play for this team a few weeks ago.
So I checked whether it would be convenient enough to play most of the games without clashing with too many live events and personal events. Realising I may have to make a few sacrifices to play as many as I deemed necessary to have a decent try at getting into the final team, I decided recently to accept the invitation knowing it had a fair chance of qualifying.
With respect to any Bolton Club players, I don"t see it would be worth my time and money trying to compete in a team that has such a small chance of success, given that the team would have to score well almost every week to stand a chance of qualifying which is virtually imposssible against teams with five times as many players.
I can even see you having to merge smaller teams like Bolton into the bigger ones very soon after the season start (if not before) to avoid team members quickly losing interest in these games and leaving one or two dedicated players fighting a lost battle.
If Bolton is the only option then, to be honest, I"ve lost interest already. And being a longterm LFC supporter, I wouldn"t even be interested in playing for Manchester either.
I was actually looking forward to playing APAT events this year when I first read the new schedule.
Oh well there"s always next year (presuming lessons will be learnt from this)
