Most people will be familiar with the concept of a Nomination List as a way to create a pool of players who are eligible to play in a specific fixture, and League Master uses them as a core feature (although a league can be run without them).

Assuming League Master has been set up in its normal configuration, there are 3 aspects of the process:

• Maintain a Player List of all players, regardless of what league they will play in from one year to the next.
• Use a selected Nomination System to allocate players into a Nomination List.
• Apply League Rules if required to the Nomination List to filter who is available for selection for a specific fixture.

Almost every type of team match is played using the concept that each set of players are ranked in ability order. In this way, the ‘number 1s’ in each team play each other, the ‘number 2s’ in each team play each, and so on.

For many reasons, this is by far the fairest method of playing league matches but requires each team to create a list of players, in ability order, at the start of the league. This list is the Nomination List, which covers all the teams in a league for each club.

The key aspects of any nomination list are:

• Players are listed in ability order within a team
• The ‘first’ team have the best players, the ‘second’ team the next best and so on.
• The degree to which these principals are enforced are a matter of the rules of a given league.

However, the above concepts can be applied in more than one way and League Master provides two alternatives: Team or Club Nominations.

This is probably the most common way of handling nominations.

For each of the teams, assuming that a club has more than one in a particular league, a simple list of players is created in a given order. Because each team is a separate list, this system can be used with Team logins. It also makes it very easy to work with individual teams, as adding and removing players is very obvious and you can have as many players nominated for each team as you want.

The key difference with Team Nominations is that you start by putting all your players in ability order (the Club Nomination column) and then you decide which team they will play in and in which position.

While this highlights the ability order, you can still place players in the team and position of choice, and as with Team Nominations, you can have as many players nominated for each team as you want.

Fixed Club Nominations

The concept of Club Nominations can be taken a step further, where you limit the team order to both a set number of players per team and also fixed in their Club Ability Order.

In the above screenshot, the league uses a fixed team size of 5 and there is no choice over what team a player is in. Having added the players in ability order, the system automatically assigns them to a team and team position. If a new player was inserted into position 4, for instance, then all the players below would move down a place, and the player at 1/5 would move to 2/1.

Playing Up or Down

When selecting a player from the drop-down selection lists in results entry, the list can be filtered according to three options:

• Fixed Team. In this case, ONLY the players in the specific team in the fixture will be shown in the list.
• Playup Only. The players in the list will include all those for the specific team in the fixture AND all those players in the teams below.
• No Restriction. Regardless of the specific team in the fixture, all players in the nomination list will be shown.

Watchdog

Apart from the Playing Up or Down options above, League Master can do no more and if you have specific rules about playing up, for instance, then these must be policed manually.

However, if you are using the Watchdog league monitoring system, then another difference between Team and Club Nominations becomes relevant, as exactly which team and string a player is entered can be checked against a set of pre-set rules.

The key difference, however, is when a club has multiple teams and, for instance, a player in the 2nd team ‘plays up’ into the 1st team, assuming your league is set to allow this.

The ‘number 1’ in the 2nd team plays up into the 1st team. Where is he allowed to play?

With Team Nominations, the 2nd team player can either play in any position within the 1st team or the player must play below everyone else.

However, with Club Nominations, Watchdog can look at the Club Nomination and decide if the player is playing in ability order.

For example:

In the above club nomination example, you can see this clearly as Kevin Clark and Mick Conway are ‘better players’ than Andy Fitzpatrick, but play in the second team not the first.

Using team nominations, the teams would look like this:

Team 1

Team 2


So, when Kevin Carr plays up, he would be allowed to play above Andy Fitzpatrick but below Kevin Carr.

This is just one example of how watchdog can monitor a league, but it illustrates the differences between the nomination systems, and allows you to decide which one works for you.