OTF
Well, what can you say about St Pancras Starmers? Formed in S29 as Red Star Belle Vue and fated to spend the thick end of 20 seasons trawling aimlessly around the lower divisions until Delicatemoth took them over in S46, three years ago this Friday, they were stablised as Clerkenwell Excelsior and propelled out of D3 after ten consecutive seasons there and quickly swept to the D2 title too. Now as Rock City Ferrets, they won D1 too in S55 and launched a brief two-season raid on the top flight before dropping back to the second tier last season, but another D1 championship – this time as St Pancras Starmers – saw them rebound at the first attempt and now they were poised for a second assault on the elite.
Launching their bid with a 1-0 home win over Dandy Town set out the Starmers’ stall, and when they parlayed that into two...four...five wins on the trot and stretched out their unbeaten start to the halfway mark and beyond, all bets were off. Leading from the second round onwards, DM’s side controlled the title race from the front with the poise of a hugely more experienced team at this level and, other than a slight wobble here and there, never let off the pace. Crucially, even when they weren’t playing well for stretches they still managed to grind out points and, as often as not, victories, leaving the two 13-time champions Croesoswallt Dragons and Dandy Town flailing in their wake despite their own best efforts. In the end, St Pancras’ maiden league title was secured with a fortnight to spare, and with the Dragons in particularly diverting all resources to development the gap only got wider as the line approached. A closing 2-0 win at the Stade Andy Liver to complete a double over the Dandies was a very fine way to wrap things up for DM’s triumphant outfit. The largely unheralded Sarmad Kurdi set them on their way with a strike from midfield after half an hour before striker Bankai Tensa Zangetsu was put through soon after the interval, by 11-goal top scorer Duke Bateman, to slot his own 8th of the term and settle things.
Outgoing champs Four Candles overcame a rocky start to finish strongly, their back-to-back defeats in rounds 13 and 14 their only losses in their last fourteen outings. They were unable to hung onto their newly-won crown, but by finishing with a win over their successors then a draw with the Highwaymen and a concluding 2-0 win at the Dragons they come home in a very creditable 2nd, 8 points behind the new champions but five clear of the pack. Four defeats on the spin to finish with for Croesoswallt drops them to 4th in the final standings. They and the Dandies finish on matching 7-4-7 records, but with Town winding up 5th on GD. Amazingly, each was only 3 points from relegation in the end.
Kernow Kensa and Vita Mortis only very recently put themselves clear of the increasingly mad struggle to avoid the drop at the back end of the campaign, but with the way things there had shaken out they were able to play out an effective dead rubber. With Great Ouse Town and Berkshire Swine below them also playing each other, those at the Kernowek Stadium were able to breathe pretty easily since they could not be caught by both that pair for sure in Mortis’ case, and in Kensa’s case could only fall below both if the Swine (2pts behind them at the start of play) beat GOT and the Cornishmen simultaneously lost by five goals worse than Ouse (level on points with them) to wipe out their 4-goal GD advantage over the latter.
The Swine started the day the wrong side of the relegation line and really went for it at home to Ouse, dominating the chances 7-2 as they looked for the win that would save them at the Fenlanders’ expense, but their aggressive tactics backfired somewhat when striker Karel Ruban was carried off whilst a superb performance from Ouse keeper Gareth Lloyd kept things goalless. Experienced GOT midfielder Hector Woodhouse was eventually stretchered from the field too in the 90th minute, but the shorthanded visitors held on at 0-0 to the final whistle to secure safety by 2 points and relegate the Swine in 8th place. Gawpus’ side spent most of the campaign in the bottom three, but finished with an excellent 8-match unbeaten run after going 9 without a win previously. By strange irony though, or something, before that they had started the term with a win over the Swine that, all else being equal, eventually decided both clubs’ fate.
Relegation ends a 13-season spell in the OTF for Sits’ team – one that began with them taking the league title on their first go back in the elite after 12 seasons outside it. That they only lost once in their last six matches yet slip through the trapdoor regardless demonstrates the closeness of the survival battle this time around.
Ouse (incidentally the only other side than the Starmers to top the league all term, after that opening-day win) in fact move up to 6th at the last, because down in Cornwall the hosts were losing 1-0 to Mortis to a 74th-min Hank Hulme header. Kensa also ended the game with 10 men when defender Wyatt Morton received his marching orders shortly afterwards, having already been booked for injuring young Reaper Men midfielder Willie Cougar early on, but they were safe in the knowledge that the stalemate at Wyatt Avenue was going to keep them up regardless. Kernow finish 7th, a point above the Swine and a point below Ouse.
Surreally for Mortis, despite not having troubled the upper reaches of the top-flight table for two full seasons, that closing win gave them four from their final five fixtures – having previous won only three times all term – and with it they were propelled at the eleventh hour to an almost completely unjustified 3rd place, to snatch the 14th podium finish in club history and pretty certainly the least-warranted.
The only other fixture of the day coincidentally pitched the two already-relegated sides against each other, in a genuine dead rubber, with Csiki Monkeys (9th) mathematically unable to finish better than 1pt from safety and Turd Division (10th) well adrift at the foot after 15 games without a win and already guaranteed bottom spot. It was perhaps surprisingly the Turds who snapped a 6-game losing streak though with a 3-1 win at Bankfalva Kert, completing their second brief foray into the top tier with slight catharsis although alas no more overall success than the previous one two seasons prior, having first come up only the season before that.
On all four consecutive ups and downs they have been accompanied by the Monkeys, who however are one ahead of them on the current yoyo tally having also been relegated from the OTF tier five campaigns back; they have now gone down-up-down-up-down between the uppermost two divisions without pausing. Both clubs will doubtless be aiming to continue the pattern next time around, but would then be hoping to follow up with a season more like that of their promotion buddies from last season – our brand-new OTF champions, St Pancras Starmers.
Well, what can you say about St Pancras Starmers? Formed in S29 as Red Star Belle Vue and fated to spend the thick end of 20 seasons trawling aimlessly around the lower divisions until Delicatemoth took them over in S46, three years ago this Friday, they were stablised as Clerkenwell Excelsior and propelled out of D3 after ten consecutive seasons there and quickly swept to the D2 title too. Now as Rock City Ferrets, they won D1 too in S55 and launched a brief two-season raid on the top flight before dropping back to the second tier last season, but another D1 championship – this time as St Pancras Starmers – saw them rebound at the first attempt and now they were poised for a second assault on the elite.
Launching their bid with a 1-0 home win over Dandy Town set out the Starmers’ stall, and when they parlayed that into two...four...five wins on the trot and stretched out their unbeaten start to the halfway mark and beyond, all bets were off. Leading from the second round onwards, DM’s side controlled the title race from the front with the poise of a hugely more experienced team at this level and, other than a slight wobble here and there, never let off the pace. Crucially, even when they weren’t playing well for stretches they still managed to grind out points and, as often as not, victories, leaving the two 13-time champions Croesoswallt Dragons and Dandy Town flailing in their wake despite their own best efforts. In the end, St Pancras’ maiden league title was secured with a fortnight to spare, and with the Dragons in particularly diverting all resources to development the gap only got wider as the line approached. A closing 2-0 win at the Stade Andy Liver to complete a double over the Dandies was a very fine way to wrap things up for DM’s triumphant outfit. The largely unheralded Sarmad Kurdi set them on their way with a strike from midfield after half an hour before striker Bankai Tensa Zangetsu was put through soon after the interval, by 11-goal top scorer Duke Bateman, to slot his own 8th of the term and settle things.
Outgoing champs Four Candles overcame a rocky start to finish strongly, their back-to-back defeats in rounds 13 and 14 their only losses in their last fourteen outings. They were unable to hung onto their newly-won crown, but by finishing with a win over their successors then a draw with the Highwaymen and a concluding 2-0 win at the Dragons they come home in a very creditable 2nd, 8 points behind the new champions but five clear of the pack. Four defeats on the spin to finish with for Croesoswallt drops them to 4th in the final standings. They and the Dandies finish on matching 7-4-7 records, but with Town winding up 5th on GD. Amazingly, each was only 3 points from relegation in the end.
Kernow Kensa and Vita Mortis only very recently put themselves clear of the increasingly mad struggle to avoid the drop at the back end of the campaign, but with the way things there had shaken out they were able to play out an effective dead rubber. With Great Ouse Town and Berkshire Swine below them also playing each other, those at the Kernowek Stadium were able to breathe pretty easily since they could not be caught by both that pair for sure in Mortis’ case, and in Kensa’s case could only fall below both if the Swine (2pts behind them at the start of play) beat GOT and the Cornishmen simultaneously lost by five goals worse than Ouse (level on points with them) to wipe out their 4-goal GD advantage over the latter.
The Swine started the day the wrong side of the relegation line and really went for it at home to Ouse, dominating the chances 7-2 as they looked for the win that would save them at the Fenlanders’ expense, but their aggressive tactics backfired somewhat when striker Karel Ruban was carried off whilst a superb performance from Ouse keeper Gareth Lloyd kept things goalless. Experienced GOT midfielder Hector Woodhouse was eventually stretchered from the field too in the 90th minute, but the shorthanded visitors held on at 0-0 to the final whistle to secure safety by 2 points and relegate the Swine in 8th place. Gawpus’ side spent most of the campaign in the bottom three, but finished with an excellent 8-match unbeaten run after going 9 without a win previously. By strange irony though, or something, before that they had started the term with a win over the Swine that, all else being equal, eventually decided both clubs’ fate.
Relegation ends a 13-season spell in the OTF for Sits’ team – one that began with them taking the league title on their first go back in the elite after 12 seasons outside it. That they only lost once in their last six matches yet slip through the trapdoor regardless demonstrates the closeness of the survival battle this time around.
Ouse (incidentally the only other side than the Starmers to top the league all term, after that opening-day win) in fact move up to 6th at the last, because down in Cornwall the hosts were losing 1-0 to Mortis to a 74th-min Hank Hulme header. Kensa also ended the game with 10 men when defender Wyatt Morton received his marching orders shortly afterwards, having already been booked for injuring young Reaper Men midfielder Willie Cougar early on, but they were safe in the knowledge that the stalemate at Wyatt Avenue was going to keep them up regardless. Kernow finish 7th, a point above the Swine and a point below Ouse.
Surreally for Mortis, despite not having troubled the upper reaches of the top-flight table for two full seasons, that closing win gave them four from their final five fixtures – having previous won only three times all term – and with it they were propelled at the eleventh hour to an almost completely unjustified 3rd place, to snatch the 14th podium finish in club history and pretty certainly the least-warranted.
The only other fixture of the day coincidentally pitched the two already-relegated sides against each other, in a genuine dead rubber, with Csiki Monkeys (9th) mathematically unable to finish better than 1pt from safety and Turd Division (10th) well adrift at the foot after 15 games without a win and already guaranteed bottom spot. It was perhaps surprisingly the Turds who snapped a 6-game losing streak though with a 3-1 win at Bankfalva Kert, completing their second brief foray into the top tier with slight catharsis although alas no more overall success than the previous one two seasons prior, having first come up only the season before that.
On all four consecutive ups and downs they have been accompanied by the Monkeys, who however are one ahead of them on the current yoyo tally having also been relegated from the OTF tier five campaigns back; they have now gone down-up-down-up-down between the uppermost two divisions without pausing. Both clubs will doubtless be aiming to continue the pattern next time around, but would then be hoping to follow up with a season more like that of their promotion buddies from last season – our brand-new OTF champions, St Pancras Starmers.
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