Regulation 2231b of the British and Irish Quidditch League was introduced after complaints from several prominent donors to the League when The Quiberon Quafflepunchers, who had transferred that year after minimal success in the French Leagues, won the 1721 Quidditch League of Greate Britain without letting their opponents score a single point across their 13 matches. Rather than question what exactly about the European Quidditch Leagues was so superior that it allowed Britain's best teams to be so thoroughly humiliated by what was considered by all rights to be a mediocre team in France, it was instead decided that in order to prevent the Quafflepunchers from playing, the League would adopt a modified version of Article 50 of the Chudley Cannons' constitution which required all members of the team to be born in Devonshire. This rule, in itself, was originally formulated to protect the founding members of the Cannons from replacement, as had happened to the Appleby Arrows a few years prior. As such, on the 18th of July, 1721, upon ratification by two thirds of the member teams, Regulation 2231 of the British and Irish Quidditch League was expanded to the following:

Regulation 2231

All Teams, as defined under Regulation 15a, must be composed of seven (7) wizards, and may optionally contain another seven (7) substitute wizards.

Amendment 2231a

Teams may be composed of either wizards or witches, or a combination of both.

Amendment 2231b

At any given point in a match, at most 75%, or three-quarters, of the members of a Team who are In Play, as defined in Regulation 45c, must have been born within Great Britain.

Because Hogwarts House Quidditch teams provided more than enough graduates to fill all 14 teams of the British and Irish League, these regulations went largely unchanged for several centuries, except from the occasional update when the Muggle governing bodies of the British Isles decided to change their names and inadvertently put every team in breach of the regulation. At some point in the late 18th Century, in attempts to end a then-uncharacteristic losing streak, the Cannons amended their own Article 50 to bring it in line with the League's regulation 2231b and subsequently placed in the top 3 positions for 7 consecutive leagues.

The period between Grindelwald's fall and Voldemort's first rise was one of great growth for British Quidditch, as more and more households found themselves with significantly more gold to spare for season tickets and merchandise. The Quidditch scene was also left largely untouched throughout the First Wizarding War, since Lord Voldemort considered such games as far beneath his notice, and most of his death eaters had financial ties to one team or another, it was of little benefit to him to target Quidditch specifically. Of course, the occasional player was caught in the crossfire, but even the muggle-born professionals were generally left alone as long as they didn't actively fight against Voldemort or his servants.

This lack of interference left the Quidditch scene in a highly advantageous position after the initial downfall of Voldemort. Few other industries had been so unaffected by the war, and for many months Quidditch was the only form of entertainment available with which the Wizarding community could celebrate their newfound peace, and even those witches and wizards who had previously spurned the sport often found themselves with little better to do than attend a game. Ticket sales rose steadily over the course of the following fifteen years of peacetime, only once dipping slightly following the events of the 1994 World Cup, but even this was short-lived as the participation of star Bulgarian seeker Viktor Krum in the Triwizard Tournament brought a new surge of interest to the scene, with no signs of slowing by the beginning of the Second Wizarding War.

Voldemort's return left Britain reeling, and while he again paid little attention to professional Quidditch, the widespread destruction still left more than a few teams down by several players, with one particularly unfortunate incident with an exploded bar causing the deaths of both the starting and reserve beaters of four separate teams. On top of this the strict curfews and frequent corporal punishment of students at Hogwarts under Death Eater control left little opportunity for anyone other than the Slytherin House team to even mount a broomstick for the majority of the year, to the extent that the House Quidditch Cup was little more than a farce to boost morale for the Slytherin team before the games were eventually cancelled altogether. The destruction caused by the Battle of Hogwarts did little to alleviate this lack of practice, as the Quidditch Pitch's status as a non-essential feature of the school meant that it was left in disrepair for nearly the entire year while the portions of the castle more necessary for day to day studies were rebuilt, finally reopening over the Easter Holidays. While the six matches required for the House Cup were successfully squeezed into the remaining term, the short timeframe combined with mandatory exams left practice sessions highly limited. This combined with the previous year's limitations on recreational activities meant that for many students, the official matches were their first time on a broomstick in nearly two years, and it certainly showed. One such match between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff lasted well over six hours, as neither seeker seemed able to spot the snitch, let alone chase it. The game was finally ended during a penalty shot, when the Hufflepuff keeper completely missed the Quaffle and instead plucked the golden snitch from the air in a Snitchnip foul, granting the win to Ravenclaw.

While under normal circumstances, such a large demand for players or a complete lack of skilled Hogwarts graduates would be of little concern for the league, as teams would respectively recruit a larger selection of Hogwarts students or simply delay playing without reserves until the following years, the combination of the two left many teams simply unable to present a full squad. Many ideas to solve the player deficit were floated and immediately shot down in the weeks prior to the transfer deadlines, from merging some of the understaffed teams (met with fury from the sponsors) to reducing the players present on the pitch (provoking outrage from the fans) to even simply cancelling that year's league altogether (the mere idea leading to riots in the streets), but none were found to be acceptable enough to pass even a simple majority vote. Eventually, with the end of the transfer window looming, the League Commission agreed that there was no perfect solution available and instead went for the imperfect solution of revoking Regulation 2231b, allowing international players to join the British and Irish League teams. While this lead to uproar from some sectors of the Quidditch community, the angriest people by far were mostly the pure-blooded traditionalist types, and since everyone was pretty sick of their nonsense after Voldemort's wars and the subsequent clean-up, they were largely ignored. Besides, it wasn't as if any of them could afford to properly bribe the Commissioner anymore.

And so it was that on Sunday the First of August, 1999, Regulation 2231b of the British and Irish Quidditch League was repealed, leaving just a week for each of the League's teams to scramble to fill their rosters before the registration period ended. By the following Friday, every team had managed to pull together a full squad, all except one, perpetually unfortunate, orange-clad crew. While the Chudley Cannons had put out no end of offers to international players, a series of incidents strange even by the standards of professional Quidditch had prevented them actually signing anyone. After Narizuvach Hravets, the star chaser of the Ukrainian national team had to be sent to St. Mungos when the contract he was meant to be signing exploded into flames, the team manager brought in a squad of Gringotts' curse breakers in hopes of tracking down the source of their problems before the transfer deadline. While the issue was quickly determined to be the result of a breach of magical constitution, it took nearly 24 hours of poring over assorted Quidditch bylaws before the Cannons' own Article 50 was found to be the culprit. By this point, it was far too late to even send an unsolicited contract by Express International Elf Post, even if there had been time to call a general meeting of the Chudley Cannons board to amend the offending rule, so a frantic, last-minute search worthy of a procrastinating University student ensued to find a British-born chaser within the six hours that remained.