The Large Trialist Family

[Ian Pethick]

Pre season is well and truly underway now, and the Trialist family are very busy.

Tiverton are the early favourites with 11 members of the Trialist family on display last night, although 6 of their siblings featured yesterday evening for Truro v Exmouth.

Seriously though, what is the point of this? The "cloak and dagger" stuff must be some clumsy attempt at making  other clubs think they have an ace up their sleeves, but I'm sure the word of mouth element amongst officials, fans and players must mean that it's pretty common knowledge of who they are anyway. Feels like this is a relatively new, social media era, phenomenon.  In the old days it was just known as "guesting", "having a run out" or "keeping your options open."

[sportsman10]

I never u understand the logic of trial player. I mean parkway have 4 on the bench today. I can only imagine they are players that might have committed to other clubs but don’t want people knowing they are turning out for someone else. All very odd 

[Ian Pethick]

I get why players would be trialled in training and PSF's, just don't understand the secrecy. Unless of course, it's as Sportsman 10 suggested, they have either signed or been "announced" elsewhere. 

[GRTourist]

I know in the past from the club I'm involved with that we have named some triallists, but not others for various reasons. Those reasons have included:

- player is trialling with a number of clubs and doesn't want to advertise that
- player is still under contract with a different club and has permission to play but club don't want it public
- manager doesn't want to flag publicly that he's looking for a certain position
- manager doesn't want to highlight that a certain player he's looking at is available

We've also sometimes listed someone as a triallist just to avoid supporters assuming that they've already signed with us.