I think this line is your problem:

my @players_list = \$players;
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If $players is a hashref, and you want to build an array of hashrefs, you should do something like this:

push(@players_list, $players);
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If you want to convert a hashref into an array, you would do something like this:

@players_list = @{ %$players };
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Note that the hash "names" will be at indexes 0,2,4,6... and the hash "values" will be indexes 1,3,5,7...

I hope that helps!