Arsenal B, Chelsea B might not be in the same league - despite recent proposals to the contrary - but they do exist and play in a reserves competition. There were objections because the Football League clubs felt that it would solidify the positions of the really strong clubs. But B teams playing in the main league is very common in Spain; Real Madrid Castilla and Barcelona B are usually in the 2nd or 3rd tier of the Spanish League. In fact, Castilla won the Copa del Rey before, but B teams can't play in that now.Roger de Coverly wrote:Not in the same league surely. In the Football League, reserve players are loaned to clubs in lower divisions, but there isn't an Arsenal 2, Chelsea 2 etc in the Championship, League One or League Two.Alex Holowczak wrote:However, the normal rationale for that in sporting leagues is so that clubs field youth/development teams lower down the league, and I guess that's not really something many chess clubs do.
Allowing the lending of players could be a better way of handling the reserve strength issue. It would avoid 80 point rule difficulties as well. Not allowing transfers of players is something where chess leagues are more stringent than sports leagues. In its earliest years, the 4NCL didn't have any formalised rules on eligibility. Players started to object when they found themselves facing the some opponent more than once.
Amateur cricket in England has rules like this. You can't play in the top division of the Warwickshire League unless you have a 2nd team and a 3rd team, no matter how good the 1st team is. I think the Worcestershire League has the same rule. The difference between the two is that in Warwickshire, there is one linear league with 2nd, 3rd etc. teams intertwined. In Worcestershire, there is a separate competition for 2nd teams. I'd be surprised if there were any Saturday leagues that didn't have rules of this nature. It's done so that ambitious clubs work to develop players and provide competitive opportunities to younger players.
Last year, there was no Wood Green 2, and they defaulted a few boards in one match because they didn't have enough available players. Now they've merged with Midland Monarchs with several other teams in the league, they're unlikely to default because they can't name enough available players. But we saw at weekend 1, Kings Head defaulted a board in Division 1. If they had a 2nd team somewhere, they could have drafted a player up from that team - they'd have a bigger squad, so despite logistic difficulties, there'd still be more chance of them solving the problem.
So actually, I'd argue that such rules benefit and encourage chess, but I expect I might be in a minority of 1.