I was thinking about national teams (something today made them cross my mind) and work can be boring. I got to thinking that it must be tough ensuring that all available players are checked to see if they are good enough and to keep track of them all. Currently we hope active forum members bring them to our attention and on a lot of work from the manager.

Thus I was thinking about the idea that we assign regional scouts, one for each region. Each scout checks every team about once a month and keeps a (private) list of all Irish players playing in that region, BPOS, position and salary (as bad players may develop to be good later all should be kept in the list).

This list should be updated at regular intervals (once every two months is probably fine, most of the work will be done the first pass anyway). Scouts could be a permanent unofficial position so that each scout could build a rapport with some of the managers in the region. Maybe even give advice as to how to train the Irish players (mostly to managers who might not know how best to train players or some who just want an international player for their team) which would hopefully lead to some stronger players. Any scouts used would also be helpful but the main thing is that any new manager (who may even be one of the scouts) is immediately presented with a list of all Irish players so they know what is available.

This would also mean most of a region would know there is someone actively looking for Irish players making the job easier again. Irish teams selling a player with potential could also notify the scout designated to the region that the player will be playing in.

If a scout wished to quit then a new one could be assigned and the list passed over to someone else.

For the ASE region the list need only be kept for foreign teams, the Irish teams will have too many players coming in and out to bother keeping an exact list.

Obviously as the guy suggesting it I volunteer, I will take whichever region no one else wants.

Gatr22 wrote: I would just like to let the WC managers be able to see or scout any players from their region. If they are elected to the position, they should be able to see this information, as it seems they have enough work to do with just evaluating and selecting the teams. However, it may be that the admins want to reward the regions that put in the most time as a collective group. Reference UK's great success with this formula. I'm not sure I understand the regional scout suggestion. Do you get additional scouts to do this? Who compiles the list to begin with?

This was designed to work within the framework and rules we have. i.e. it involves the admins doing nothing. While allowing the managers to see all players from their region would be ideal I don't think relying on admins to do stuff for us is a sound policy. Any elections for these positions would have to be run by the country community itself and no extra powers or scouts are granted. This position has no additional benefit aside from the warm glow of helping your country.

Lets say I am chosen as the regional scout for the NA region.

1. I flick through every team in the NA region looking for Irish flags. (This can be done over some time period).

2. For every Irish flag I see I put down Player name, Rating, Position and wages (all available without scouts).

3. I make contact in the forums with the region in question, introduce myself and explain what I want to do. This may be less successful in regions where English is not a heavily spoken language but we may be lucky and get managers who are bilingual or enough helpful managers in a region who speak English to get the message across.

4. Not required but helpful is using personal scouts on better players or asking managers personally about their players. This may be better as it would allow me to find out what training the player will be doing.

5. Advise any managers unsure of how best to train the player.

6. At regular intervals I flick through every team again and note down the changes (players gone, new players, rating changes etc).

So I would compile the NA list initially. Does that make things any clearer?

Just started Central Europe, holy fucking shits that's a lot of leagues

Apologies Christy, was meant to reply back to this thread earlier. Actually need to get abit more active on the Irish forum again.

With being able to scroll through a teams entire transfer history, just go through who each team has sold and you will quickly sweep through what Irish talent is out there.

Now, you wont be able to find hidden gems that were cut instead of sold, but you're talking about a small percentage of players like that anyway. Also, you wont have to monotonously go through each region and division.

Emeraldfin wrote: Apologies Christy, was meant to reply back to this thread earlier. Actually need to get abit more active on the Irish forum again. With being able to scroll through a teams entire transfer history, just go through who each team has sold and you will quickly sweep through what Irish talent is out there. Now, you wont be able to find hidden gems that were cut instead of sold, but you're talking about a small percentage of players like that anyway. Also, you wont have to monotonously go through each region and division.

That does sound like it might work better. Though have many Irish teams gone bot who could have sold a potential star early off? The other issue is whether or not it would be handy to get people involved in how Irish foreign players are being trained. Obviously we can't dictate it but it might be useful if we could suggest that a player would have a higher chance of getting into the squad as a WR or whatever.