Rosters and related

Thoughts here on rosters plus the interrelated topics of tournaments/scheduling, coaching/ageing, and recruitment. Note that I’m assuming 4 teams in four conferences (although this should be scalable with just slight amendments) and that we’re going for a match experience which includes substitutions and using Fit to determine when substitutes are brought on. I’m also assuming a matchday squad of 12 (seven players and five substitutes), but there is a case for seven substitutes.

Tournaments/Scheduling

I’m assuming that we will have eight Tournament sessions and four Conference sessions.

Conference

Each team hosts one session per season, where they receive home advantage. Teams play all of the three other teams in their Conference - meaning they play each other four times a season.

Tournaments

(Note: this doesn’t feel right yet). Teams are randomly drawn into a group with teams from other Conferences. One Conference is considered the host nation and all teams from this Conference receive home advantage throughout the Tournament (even if they play each other in the knock out stages). Each Conference will host two Tournaments per season.

On Day 1 of a Tournament, the group stages are played - three games for which orders are needed. The top two from each group reach the knock out stages where they are seeded based on their results.

On Day 2 the knock out stages (QF, SF and F) are played. The winner is awarded a trophy. This is where I think we have problems. Ideally, we’d do each Tournament in one go, but this requires each Coach to submit orders for up to another three games - without prior knowledge of who their opponents are.

Tournament League points are awarded depending on where a team finishes in a Tournament. At the end of the season, the team with the most tournament points wins the League.

Rosters, Ageing and Coaching

For a matchday squad of 12 or 14 it seems reasonable to assume that a full roster should be at least 16 to 18. There’s a case for the optimum being 21 - essentially three players for every position. Assuming a similar ageing process to MSWL, that would equate to something like - the player in possession of the shirt, an older player who used to be the main man and is now on their way out but can still do a job for the team, and a young player being groomed to take over the position in the future.

Perhaps that suggests a split of two to three years as a young player (SB, App, Age 1), two to three years as the main man (Age 1, Age 2, Age 3), and one or two years as a useful squad player (Age 3, Age 4). If that feels a bit too similar to MSWL, then one option is to change the cost of coaching points so that +1 level costs, say, to New Level - Age. If Ageing remains Current Level - New Age, it will stretch the age profile a bit.

Recruitment

Historically, rugby works on the basis of spotting and nurturing talent - so something akin to TMVL probably works better than MSWL (except perhaps for being able to discover SBs). It also doesn’t tend to have transfers so we could rule out inter-team deals and non-league sales. Auctions also don’t feel quite right.

You could lift the TMVL system wholesale - it would work really well thematically if, instead of being college recruitment, it’s actually recruitment from colleges - so perhaps these are Apprentices rather than SBs.

One idea for making it a bit different to TMVL could be to allow Coaches to invest some of their RP into their own academies, providing a level boost to the SBs they produce.

As you know, I toyed with the idea of a draft but I’m struggling to see how you could make it as compelling as the TMVL system across the season.