Originally Posted by
Singlespeed
I am not against promotion and relegation, but I just do not see it being the thing that solves all the issues. It might fix some issues, it might even make the end of season recruitment circus worse. Recruitment will be more important.
Currently the teams at the bottom are probably doing the most development of players, because they have to, and every-time they do develop players they get poached by or move to the "bigger" clubs. You cannot say just because a club is in the lower ranks of the competition that they are not developing or trying to develop players.
The other issue I see with it is that teams will need to start "playing to win" near the end of the season - which is good and bad. The good is there is something to play for and consequences of losing, the bad is that the style of play will go out the window and development can suffer.
What parents need is a some sort of ranking on the quality of the coaching/development at the clubs. That is difficult, but do able. Currently the only thing to go by is results - so recruitment is king, the good kids tend to go to the "winning" clubs (as what else can they judge it on?), so it is a never ending cycle.
