If I put the -options = \@ids, in the add then changeEditPlayer fires with $name set to "index: 0" (or other appropriate index number if a selected value is supplied). When a selection is made by the user, or if the list is hooked up outside the add, the text for the selected element is provided in $name as expected.

A bug in the widget code maybe? Anyway the code evolved into that form as a result rather than adding special case code to changeEditPlayer to deal with the problem.