After days of closed door negotiations which brought the league to a standstill, amidst media speculation rife with talk of closure, rebellion and financial mismanagement, this morning the doors of the league office were once again open to the public.  Smiles of greeting and replies such as, "No, there was no talk of closure," were heard in the wood panelled, luxuriously carpeted foyer.  Making himself comfortable in one of the beautifully upholstered leather armchairs was none other than the recently knighted Sir William la Rodentia (his secretary said, "good night").  While Sir William refused to comment on the rumours of sweeping changes in FLATNZ ("Utter rubbish!"), he was quite willing to talk about his team's performance against the Alcoholics last session.  "Pure brilliance," he purred.  Yes, that's right, cat lovers - purred!  The match against the Devils, however, had him spluttering in his drink.  "An outrage," he declared!  "Pure handball!"  When we suggested that goal keepers were permitted to use their hands, he suggested we go and tell Parongia that, since he didn't seem to have figured it out.  Perhaps this was not the time to press Sir William about the final match, since he abruptly got out of his chair and left.  Expert commentators agree, however, that he made a fundamental error in switching to stall against longball while marking with more than 2 players.  Simple statistical analysis shows that he would have been much better to have remained playing ball control despite the subbing of his stars.

Scoring should also be difficult, as GM's Idi Amin leads the league in Goals Against Average. He has played the 6th most minutes of any player in the league and has only let in 3 goals. Then again, in all that time he's only faced 10 shots, so maybe if we can get lucky enough to have 3 or 4 float our way off bad passes we can convert one now that we are up to a whopping three shooters over SL 20. Marauder fans had best not get their hopes too high against the likes of Amin, though some optimism and noise from the crowd would be nice as it's our only home match of the session.

The clash against the Tartan Army of Scotland will likely be over by halftime. While we don't plan on laying down for them (mostly because there's no way we want to see what's up those kilts), it would take McCormack breaking his leg in the opening minutes for us to have a good chance of victory.

Then we welcome SAT to Tinfield, not getting an easier. Then away to LSD who we pipped into Alpha last year, they're a lot stronger now.

Not much time for the e-soccer since mid-season.  I still intend to implement the Team of Week/Season ideas, but it might have to wait until I can get a bit of a breather.  Last week was busy with work hitting the evenings for Julia & I, followed by being away for the weekend with a church thing.  I also received news that my uncle had died.  Number 11 of 12 siblings, and the first to die.  So we packed up the kids and went to the funeral.  Quite a good time, actually, for all its sadness.  Many of us cousins haven't seen each other for 20 years, so there where those delightful moments where you're trying to determine if this person is a friend of the family or a relative whom I should know.  Also quite novel being with a group of people who are like me (and even more so), as those family traits are seen replicated across a bunch of people.  Very glad to have been part of the occassion, and very worth the effort.  Now I seem to be scrambling to get things set up for Easter, not to mention my wife's birthday tomorrow.  Haven't done my lineups yet, but they should get done tomorrow.  If not, well, the league might be able to wait on the commissioner.

Anyway, Alpha, then.  Last session could have been slightly more rewarding of the effort put in.  Have to play one of my matches a bit lean, but otherwise in good form heading in.  The one part of the form we'd like to change is the shot conversion.  We doubled it in the final Conference round, all the way up to 17.5%, but we're still bottom of the heap.

Looks like the schedule maker did us no favors by starting the Beta campaign against MLB, who will undoubtedly throw down the T11 on general principle. That's followed by the eternally crafty Mike H. and the Expos, who always play us tough. And then the ASM tag team host us for the last match, when we will likely be too tired to put up much resistance. All told, I'd be very happy with a draw and close loss out of these three matches.

The best news for KM? After this session is done, we'll have a goalie over SL 20 for the first time in two seasons! There is hope yet for something resembling a defense on this team after all, even if that means that all my UTs take their shots from the behind the midfield circle.

I am delighted to make it into the Alpha Conference for the first time. I thought I would miss out after going NMR, but two excellent wins mean that we avoid a second season running in Beta. I guess we were fortunate with the run in as we faced the bottom two teams - Kingsridge and Gibraltar. We won both games 4-0. KM lost thanks to four first half goals and Gib succumbed to four second half strikes.

Nope.
Giving up 5 second-half goals while not managing to score any more ourselves, ODD came storming back for the win. We'll take the 2 points for close loss and 3+ goals, however with that loss our chances of stealing a playoff spot for the Bowl just got very long indeed.

In any case, the match was a lot of fun to read through - which is the point of the games anyway!

Looking forward to the All-Star games. Having two good old UTs and two good young UTs I'm sure the Northern managers won't mind selecting from my lineup this season. I always hated having to pick lower quality players from the bottom team. Can't ever hurt having quality Utility players to move all over though. Hopefully they'll learn something from playing with the league stars and come back ready to dominate Beta in KM fashion of old. Once we get a GK that is.

We increased our lead over the next best team from 2 to 6 points, in effect giving us a free game to rest players.

Cash is low but we are now training and coaching the support players rather than the stars so we shouldn't have any problems.

First up OLY welcome Northern leaders AA to Tinfield, some great players from front to back and they'll be looking to get some more points for a nice start in Alpha. Then we travel to WRR who are currently in 3rd and have only scored 8 goals so far, yikes they may find their shooting boots for this one.

For OLY Alpha is certainly not guaranteed. A back of envelope type calculation indicates that 34 points may be required to qualify for Alpha, OLY are on 31 so we need at least one 4 point win I think to qualify. It's going to be exciting, good luck all!

Apparently we have some sort of shield in our possesion and our next opponents ""The Rats" will no doubt want to take that away from us .

Ambivilent: feelings neither for nor against.  That's last session.  3 draws.  Myeh.  I guess that means we correctly judged the strength needed in each match so as not to lose any of them.  GM, AA & KM is a reasonably tough session.  Okay, GM doesn't look so tough right now, with Steven a bit distracted, but you can't tell that from the squad.  And AA went from 4th to 1st, so I'd say we did a reasonable job holding them to a draw.  As for KM, I'd be worried if it was a team of one-legged men on crutches as long as Kevin is coach.  Maybe we were too conservative.  Who knows.  At least we held position in 3rd spot, which is a pretty big deal in Northern this season.

Next up we meet the King of Stall, before taking on the resurgent OLY.  Holylanders struggled a bit last season, but they seem to have found their feet again.  Since they're right above us on the table, it might be a question of who wants 2nd most?  As they play top of the table AA before meeting us, we might have the advantage.  Depending on how grumpy Robin is feeling.  You don't want the Scottish Hitman feeling like death!

Unfortunately, just as we start looking at the team and deciding that things are improving, I look around the tables at the other teams I've had a hand helping to round into shape. ASM (ghosting for half a season last year) is sitting in a very comfortable spot under Team Talsma and pulling some impressive upsets against the top clubs. AA (ghosted for the first four sessions this season) is now tops of the Northern table with just two matches to go! So if the teams I helped build up are doing so well, and the team I've had the most consistent hand on for the past two years is doing so poorly, the difference is?...