club pass rule

if someone wanted to challenge the club pass rule with north texas soccer, how would they, and who would you start with?

rules should be put in place to benefit everyone, but only 4 clubs get a benefit from this rule (sting, texans, solar and fc dallas). i know, they are the big clubs and probably control most everything that north texas soccer does, but that still doesn't make it right.

state cup is the big issue here. all 4 of the above clubs use this rule to beef up their state cup teams by pulling players from their ecnl teams. so, a small club team with a rash of injuries has to play with what they have, while the big clubs just add a handfull of ecnl players (who, by the way, have not played with this "team" all year). even worse, some of them pull ecnl players and move healthy players that have played all year to the bench. how would you feel if your dd had played all year, but did not see the field in state cup because your club brought in some "better" (maybe better) players?

regular tournaments and showcases are different, but state cup should not allow this to happen. you should have to play with the players that have been on your roster all year.

agree or disagree? would like to hear how the soccer community feels about this rule.

if I am not mistaken, the club pass rules applies to all clubs.

backpost wrote:if someone wanted to challenge the club pass rule with north texas soccer, how would they, and who would you start with?

rules should be put in place to benefit everyone, but only 4 clubs get a benefit from this rule (sting, texans, solar and fc dallas). i know, they are the big clubs and probably control most everything that north texas soccer does, but that still doesn't make it right.

state cup is the big issue here. all 4 of the above clubs use this rule to beef up their state cup teams by pulling players from their ecnl teams. so, a small club team with a rash of injuries has to play with what they have, while the big clubs just add a handfull of ecnl players (who, by the way, have not played with this "team" all year). even worse, some of them pull ecnl players and move healthy players that have played all year to the bench. how would you feel if your dd had played all year, but did not see the field in state cup because your club brought in some "better" (maybe better) players?

regular tournaments and showcases are different, but state cup should not allow this to happen. you should have to play with the players that have been on your roster all year.

agree or disagree? would like to hear how the soccer community feels about this rule.

Disagree on red above, esecially the reference to 'all'.

Texans do not do that and does not encourage it, although by rule they know they can do it. I think last year even FCDallas did not do that either.

backpost wrote:if someone wanted to challenge the club pass rule with north texas soccer, how would they, and who would you start with?

rules should be put in place to benefit everyone, but only 4 clubs get a benefit from this rule (sting, texans, solar and fc dallas). i know, they are the big clubs and probably control most everything that north texas soccer does, but that still doesn't make it right.

state cup is the big issue here. all 4 of the above clubs use this rule to beef up their state cup teams by pulling players from their ecnl teams. so, a small club team with a rash of injuries has to play with what they have, while the big clubs just add a handfull of ecnl players (who, by the way, have not played with this "team" all year). even worse, some of them pull ecnl players and move healthy players that have played all year to the bench. how would you feel if your dd had played all year, but did not see the field in state cup because your club brought in some "better" (maybe better) players?

regular tournaments and showcases are different, but state cup should not allow this to happen. you should have to play with the players that have been on your roster all year.

agree or disagree? would like to hear how the soccer community feels about this rule.

While I am not a particular fan of the rule, good luck with getting it changed.

The rule is much broader than the way you've defined it. It goes well beyond the ECNL clubs, and allows a team to add players from other teams within their club, regardless of ECNL membership.

A club with more than one team in an age group can take a player in a need position from another team in the age group, or even from a younger age group, I believe. There are many clubs other than the 4 you've mentioned with more than one team in an age group.

As I said I'm not crazy about the rule, and feel kind of bad for a player that gets benched for a player from another team. That said, in the older age groups, high school soccer injuries can really deplete a roster, to the point where they have trouble fielding a complete team.

I'm going to guess one of the drivers for the rule is an attempt to enhance NTX team's performance in regionals and nationals, particularly in the older ages. With 5 ECNL clubs, the remaining NTX teams are not as strong as they used to be pre-ECNL, and therefore perhaps less likely to advance against teams from an area with a lower concentration of ECNL teams.

Pele98 wrote:

backpost wrote:if someone wanted to challenge the club pass rule with north texas soccer, how would they, and who would you start with?

rules should be put in place to benefit everyone, but only 4 clubs get a benefit from this rule (sting, texans, solar and fc dallas). i know, they are the big clubs and probably control most everything that north texas soccer does, but that still doesn't make it right.

state cup is the big issue here. all 4 of the above clubs use this rule to beef up their state cup teams by pulling players from their ecnl teams. so, a small club team with a rash of injuries has to play with what they have, while the big clubs just add a handfull of ecnl players (who, by the way, have not played with this "team" all year). even worse, some of them pull ecnl players and move healthy players that have played all year to the bench. how would you feel if your dd had played all year, but did not see the field in state cup because your club brought in some "better" (maybe better) players?

regular tournaments and showcases are different, but state cup should not allow this to happen. you should have to play with the players that have been on your roster all year.

agree or disagree? would like to hear how the soccer community feels about this rule.

Disagree on red above, esecially the reference to 'all'.

Texans do not do that and does not encourage it, although by rule they know they can do it. I think last year even FCDallas did not do that either.

Texans do it. i personally know a texan coach that turned down using ecnl players in last year's state cup, even though the doc was pushing it hard.

fc dallas does it too. i know because they did it in at least 2 age groups last year. and they were the ones that put healthy, rostered, players on the bench, even though they had been playing all year.

i say it only benefits the big 4 because it does. if you are a small club, maybe the next best team in your club is d3. nothing against d3 teams, but there will be very few players on a d3 team that would help a d1 team in state cup.

backpost wrote:
Texans do it. i personally know a texan coach that turned down using ecnl players in last year's state cup, even though the doc was pushing it hard.

fc dallas does it too. i know because they did it in at least 2 age groups last year. and they were the ones that put healthy, rostered, players on the bench, even though they had been playing all year.

i say it only benefits the big 4 because it does. if you are a small club, maybe the next best team in your club is d3. nothing against d3 teams, but there will be very few players on a d3 team that would help a d1 team in state cup.

Again, good luck in your effort to get it changed. Just because you've defined it very narrowly (probably because you think it affects your dd's team), doesn't mean it will make a compelling argument for change.

The letter of the rule is meant to help teams that have injuries and players who left the team through the year as they advance through State Cup, Regionals and Nationals and was in place prior to the current ECNL set up. The rule starts at U13 this year and U14 in the past. The 99 Texans won Regionals (U13) last year with only 11/12 players a game. If the rule covered U13, they could of and would of brought some other players in. In that situation, it is a great rule. Who in their right mind would travel to North Carolina with only 11 players if you did not have to?? As for State Cup, you get seeded in the Fall and could be down due to injuries by the time the Tourney comes around. Your argument can ONLY be against ECNL players. But in theory, every single player on a Lake Highlands team "could" play ECNL as well, so good luck with that. North Texas can say you can only play on one team in North Texas, but can't stop you from playing ECNL, High School, Indoor, 3V3, or anything else. And if NTX tried to ban you from playing in NTX, because you played something like ECNL (a completley different business), they would soon be paying you a nice chunk of money.

I think this rule is in the best interest of NTSSA. Why wouldn't they want the best possible representative at Regionals?

Sure, this penalizes smaller one-offs, but, the big picture is that NTSSA wants to gather more accolades and this rule helps them do just that.

soccersounder wrote:The letter of the rule is meant to help teams that have injuries and players who left the team through the year as they advance through State Cup, Regionals and Nationals and was in place prior to the current ECNL set up. The rule starts at U13 this year and U14 in the past. The 99 Texans won Regionals (U13) last year with only 11/12 players a game. If the rule covered U13, they could of and would of brought some other players in. In that situation, it is a great rule. Who in their right mind would travel to North Carolina with only 11 players if you did not have to?? As for State Cup, you get seeded in the Fall and could be down due to injuries by the time the Tourney comes around. Your argument can ONLY be against ECNL players. But in theory, every single player on a Lake Highlands team "could" play ECNL as well, so good luck with that. North Texas can say you can only play on one team in North Texas, but can't stop you from playing ECNL, High School, Indoor, 3V3, or anything else. And if NTX tried to ban you from playing in NTX, because you played something like ECNL (a completley different business), they would soon be paying you a nice chunk of money.

I don't believe that North Texas adopted the club pass rule until last year, for the 2012 State Cup.

backpost wrote:
i say it only benefits the big 4 because it does. if you are a small club, maybe the next best team in your club is d3. nothing against d3 teams, but there will be very few players on a d3 team that would help a d1 team in state cup.

Although, it is theoretically more beneficial to a big club with ECNL players available, smaller clubs with good players on lower level teams can benefit. For example, last year TX Spirit 97G was a top D2 team moving into D1 this year. We used the club pass to add 3 players from the other D2 team and 2 player from our PPL team, in last year's state cup. We made it to the finals, losing 1-0 to the eventual reginal champions, Sting 97. Both Sting teams, and FC Dallas had ECNL players on their rosters (however, I believe a lot of them were dual rostered through league play as well). There are plenty of good players on lower level teams, and plenty of good players not playing ECNL.

Don't forget the best part: The rosters are only locked for each round (State Cup, Regionals, Nationals).

So, you can be a "club pass" player rostered on a team that fails to win State Cup and still get to play for the other team from your Club that made it through at Regionals (or Nationals).