The optimization process and recommendations:

1. Avoid Selecting Unnecessary Columns (query line: 7): Avoid selecting all columns with the '*' wildcard, unless you intend to use them all. Selecting redundant columns may result in unnecessary performance degradation.
2. Avoid Subqueries (query line: 9): We advise against using subqueries as they are not optimized well by the optimizer. Therefore, it's recommended to join a newly created temporary table that holds the data, which also includes the relevant search index.
3. Avoid Subqueries (query line: 14): We advise against using subqueries as they are not optimized well by the optimizer. Therefore, it's recommended to join a newly created temporary table that holds the data, which also includes the relevant search index.
4. Avoid Subqueries (query line: 42): We advise against using subqueries as they are not optimized well by the optimizer. Therefore, it's recommended to join a newly created temporary table that holds the data, which also includes the relevant search index.
5. Create Optimal Indexes (modified query below): The recommended indexes are an integral part of this optimization effort and should be created before testing the execution duration of the optimized query.
6. Explicitly ORDER BY After GROUP BY (modified query below): By default, the database sorts all 'GROUP BY col1, col2, ...' queries as if you specified 'ORDER BY col1, col2, ...' in the query as well. If a query includes a GROUP BY clause but you want to avoid the overhead of sorting the result, you can suppress sorting by specifying 'ORDER BY NULL'.

Optimal indexes for this query:

ALTER TABLE `cc6_MensLeague_scoresheets` ADD INDEX `cc6_scoresheets_idx_p1` (`p1`);

The optimized query:

SELECT
        (@rank := if(@points = points,
        @rank + 1,
        if(@points := points,
        @rank + 1,
        @rank + 1))) AS rank,
        er.* 
    FROM
        (SELECT
            @id := cc6_MensLeague_players.id AS `id`,
            @rounds := (ifnull((SELECT
                sum(p1.w) 
            FROM
                (SELECT
                    @r1 := (CASE 
                        WHEN cc6_MensLeague_scoresheets.p1_r1 LIKE '%' THEN 1 
                        ELSE 0 END) AS r1,
@r2 := (CASE 
    WHEN cc6_MensLeague_scoresheets.p1_r2 LIKE '%' THEN 1 
    ELSE 0 END) AS r2,
@r3 := (CASE 
    WHEN cc6_MensLeague_scoresheets.p1_r3 LIKE '%' THEN 1 
    ELSE 0 END) AS r3,
@r4 := (CASE 
    WHEN cc6_MensLeague_scoresheets.p1_r4 LIKE '%' THEN 1 
    ELSE 0 END) AS r4,
(@r1 + @r2 + @r3 + @r4) AS w 
FROM
cc6_MensLeague_scoresheets 
WHERE
cc6_MensLeague_scoresheets.p1 = @id) p1),
0)) AS `rounds`,
sum((@rounds * 2) + (@rounds * 1)) AS `points` 
FROM
cc6_MensLeague_players 
GROUP BY
`id` 
ORDER BY
NULL) er CROSS 
JOIN
(
SELECT
@rank := 0,
@points := -1
) params 
ORDER BY
id DESC LIMIT 9