Nick whilst i agree this is a good rule to prevent 'the grass is greener' players, it throws some real spanners in the works.
We have several players whose commitment has faltered from their original pledge(for whatever reason), these need to be replaced- we cannot replace them either temporarily or permanently with players that have already played this season or intend to play this season with another team.
Essentially if i have an injured player or someone else's life situation changes, i will struggle to field a full 7 man team- regardless of the fact i already have 10 of my 15 roster spaces filled. Iwe are currently workign to add the remaining 5 to fill this void, but i have to do this before campaign, which means taking a chance on players that are unproven etc.
If i am unable to field 7 players- i am not going to pay all that money to attend the event with 6, that'd be crazy.
so thats a team no longer attending that would have attended ALL the events.
Do this several times over as i'm sure were not the isolated case, and maybe you can empathise with why lower division teams are not overly happy with the rule.
I would like the IPPU to look into the possibility of either a Transfer fee for moving/signing previously registered players (reasonable though, obviously greater than a new players registration fee but no more than teams entrance fee divided by 7)
Or
Permit all teams to make x (to be determined) number of free transfers within a season.
A.B