The players new or old have to pass a very dangerous initiation. They have to take time every week to walk into a chess club and play chess with each other.
How the clubs, find or choose their players?

You find a club, walk into it, talk with some people, play some games - and if you want to, you're a member. No matter how good or bad you are.
If you're bad, you'll generally get better pretty quickly - interaction with strong players is one of the best methods to make progress, especially on the very low levels - where even just one comment can make a difference of hundreds of rating points (this is not an exaggeration).
How they find players *-*