I'm running my ageing process, and by association league seasons, based on RL calendar months. Now I know running 1:1 NS year to RL month is preposterously quick and far too much work which I often regret, but so far in the year and a bit since I've been back it has neatly aged my players 4 years per WC. I think most prefer to aim for 2 years given the choice and therefore 1:2 NS year to RL month. My point being perhaps we peg the NS calendar to RL in some way - and the easiest one to regularise 'on the clock' would be the WC itself, which is presently hitting a 4-month cycle quite neatly. As a large portion of the NS Sport community are involved and there is a solid structure with committee, President and VP it wouldn't take much to ensure it runs on a set time frame by managing the sign-up, host voting and tournament starts. You could almost diary the next year, two, five, ten years of WC schedules. Then you have a good 'football clock' ticking in the background from which to look at how UICA and/or other club tournaments work, not dependent on any one person to regularise.
If there is a community desire for 2:1 ratio for club tournaments to WC cycles, then the simple answer would be Vilita's 'in-between' NS CL, which would be relatively easy to schedule if you had the WC football clock nicely oiled and keeping good time. If it is uncoupled from UICA then league RPers who are struggling for time could skip it without impacting their UICA rank.
If the community would rather it was UICA but more regularly, that is an open conversation to be had with CH about how others might help. With five tournaments in all if you throw in the Cygnus Cup for good measure, there could potentially be a group of five who manage scorination, if CH is prepared to hand over UICA to committee. That is a big question we perhaps need to ask CH; can the NS community take on the management - or at least a share in - what is an institution now and an important facet of football RP here, but one that is slowing down considerably and perhaps needs a bit of oxygen? The WC model works in timely order as a committee-driven initiative, perhaps UICA could become a shared load as well.
I think people have enjoyed the extended break and taken advantage of long gaps to live a little in RL, but the fact this conversation has come up and there have been a number of contributors means regularisation is something we might want to work toward. Whether changing UICA is possible or desirable, or whether an interval NS-CL is the solution, personally I'm in favour of exploring options.
, and as someone who appreciates Nephara's work in writing descriptions for transfers, I'll concur that a good description goes a long way in determining whether or not a player should be signed to a particular team.
