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A club's web presence can assist with two aspects of team selection: player availability and team announcements. Many clubs struggle with online team selections and announcements as it is difficult to set up a single online platform that is used by everyone. They often adopt a hybrid solution that involves different platforms. With these online systems it is still important to ensure that important personal conversations around team selection still occur (eg when a player is dropped).
Although some athletics clubs need to pick 'teams' to participate in organised events, the use of a club's web presence to assist with team selection and announcements is often raised by cricket clubs as an issue.The web presence can assist team selection in two major ways: players may be able to indicate their availability for particular matches and selected teams can be announced online.
However, many clubs find it difficult to use their web presence in this manner. One of the major problems they face is the use of multiple online platforms by players. If not all players use the platform chosen to manage team selection then how is everybody going to be able to indicate their availability or be notified about selection? This is a club process where many and varied online solutions have been arrived at by clubs. There appears to be no perfect solution, so it is a matter of clubs weighing up their options and deciding what is best for them. Here are a few options available to clubs:
Team selection facilities offered by major sporting bodies. On face value, this would appear to be an ideal solution as it does not cost anything and can be linked with a website provided by the major sporting body. However, some of the issues of using this are that this website might be not used by the club at all if it has set up its own website separately. Also, it may be difficult to members to access it, especially if they mainly use social media. Finally, some clubs do not use the feature intentionally as they do not want their opponents to know their selected team.
Use of social media to indicate availability and to announce teams. The most commonly used social media tool is Facebook, but other tools used for this purpose are WhatsApp and Twitter. Again, the main issue is whether team members are actually using the adopted tool. Some clubs set up closed social media groups for teams and/or matches. These also have the advantage of any 'banter' occurring within the group being constrained to just those within the group.
Use of other tools, such as Team App . Again, the main issue with these is getting members to actually use them.
In many cases, clubs come have come up with a hybrid solution whereby teams are posted on multiple platforms, in conjunction with more traditional strategies such as posting notices in the clubrooms, SMS messages, Captains telephoning team members and so forth.
Unintended consequences?
Some clubs have commented that the use of the web presence for team selection has had some unintended consequences on the dynamics of team selection:
Players leave it until the last minute to notify the club of their availability.
It is easier to indicate unavailability online than to tell a Captain or Selector face-to-face or by telephone.
The reverse also applies – it is easier to notify players that they are dropped online than face-to-face or via phone.
In some instances, clubs have tried to restore the balance a little. For instance, captains or selectors are still required to notify a player who has been dropped or demoted to a lower grade personally - before team announcements are posted online. This is a good practice.
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