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X11 season 45 - de rigueur Mortis

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    Originally posted by SouthdownRebel View Post
    Sits?
    Sorry SdR, I actually keep doing this lately – seeing the SDR logo by your name, and somewhere in my brain parsing this information as "very short name, begins with S, chap I like" and getting the wrong ID out the other side of this process. These temporary misapprehensions hadn't made it into print before, though...!

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      Sits is a decent sort, to be fair, so I'm quite happy to be mistaken for him.

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        Well, quite so – as I say, my 'reasoning' process is actually a compliment to both of you!

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          Aww shucks, I'll pay you both later, SDR and VT....

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              Just looking at the OTF tables and honour roll a moment ago it struck me, for all that this season looks most likely to end in La Décima for either Amwythig Dragons or Dandy Town, there's been a remarkable variety of league winners recently: 8 in the last 11 seasons, stretching back to Fourth Lanark's, er, fourth and last title.

              If it does go to either of the above this time around, or indeed anyone above 6th-placed Zeugmaspor right now, it'll end a streak of five consecutive different winners, three of them first-timers: Eriskay, Mortis, then the Dandies and the Dragons, and most recently the Swine – surely a league record? There are ten championship-winning clubs presently in existence, a quarter of the whole league, including 8 of the 10 teams in the current top flight.

              The flip side of this is that the batch of recent debutant champions are forming an increasingly sizeable pool of one-off winners, which previously had been limited to just Season 7 victors Hornville as far as the extant clubs go – and Season 3 winners 1927 if you dig right back into the mists of history. (1927 being the name of the team, not the distance back one has to go...) Until recently there had always been that curiosity of how every other side to win the league managed to win it at least once – often exactly once – more afterwards. There were two in a row for Steaua Bridge, two in three seasons for AFC Purgatory (a.k.a. Sherwood Merry Men, Greenguard) and two in seven for Zeugma; five of those six titles formed the 'interregnum' between Dragons' original reign of terror and the ascent of the Dandies to preeminence, immediately before I started playing the game – Zeugma's second came in my first season in the league. Then more recently there were four in seven seasons (the last three all in a row) for Fourth and two consecutive for Great Ouse Town.

              Before that there were also three early titles for dglh's East Village Idiots and four each for Mortlake Dodgers and Green Star F-Burg/Isaac Bradley XI, in amongst the first five or seven [Cardiff] Dragons wins. Yet recently Hideous, Eriskay, Mortis and now almost certainly the Swine have all come up short when defending their maiden titles, and have fallen back in the following seasons. Notwithstanding that Expression have been challenging at the top end most of the current campaign, and the Norfolk sides have shown flickers elsewhere, there's been a tremendous amount of flux in the balance of power in the league of late – but it invariably seems to gravitate back to the two giants sooner or later.
              Last edited by Various Artist; 08-03-2018, 13:30.

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                Interesting analysis VA - I much prefer to see a competitive league with a variety of winners, whether real or virtual.

                Now, if Hornville can maintain their form through the rest of the current season we might work our way towards a shot at doubling our tally..

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                  Thanks for rubbing that in VA, sorry i meant to say reminding me. Zeugmaspor are continuing their fine form of conceding five every away game.

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                    I couldn't believe it when I saw that had happened again, AE – and you were leading this time, too!

                    You might have as good a shot as any of us one-time champions of picking up a second crown, SdR. I'm looking forward to seeing Hornville back among the big boys soon.


                    The other thing I noticed this lunchtime was how Mortis midfielder Ryan Threlfall had been injured for only 5 cumulative days in 13 seasons, for all that he gets marked the shit out of a lot of the time. Naturally, my becoming aware of this proved the equivalent of hanging a large CROCK ME NOW sign around his neck, and he duly lasted a mere 8 minutes into today's game against the Dragons before getting stretchered off.

                    Somehow we still drew 0-0, but in a campaign where we've struggled to string two good results together, have downward-plunging form across the squad, have already sold Seymour Buckley and are awaiting the retirement of a form-devoid Gregor Crompton, this was not the ideal thing to happen in terms of cobbling together a viable midfield for the next fortnight. Mercifully our latest reverse to the Monkeys on Monday had already killed off our faint hopes of maintaining a challenge this season.

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                      Enjoyed your OTF analysis VA. I think to some extent it’s a time thing. A lot of the teams who joined in the peak years of X11 have had time to mature and their managers gain understanding of the game. Like training and playing at the same time...

                      So by its nature if enough of them stick around, and so do enough of the older powers, there should be more half decent teams around. But still a couple of behemoths who remain behemoths. And that’s the challenge to the rest: to become the next “dynasty” team. To coin a horrible US sport-ism.
                      Last edited by Sits; 09-03-2018, 11:19.

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                        We(GOT)'re doooooomed

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                          Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
                          hanging a large CROCK ME NOW sign around his neck
                          Crock me Amadeus?

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                            Oooh – I've just discovered that if you go to the black menu bar at the top of the X11 screen, select 'The Game' menu and go down to 'Xpert leagues', scrolling to the bottom of the list reveals that the Pro League has become the first of the men's official leagues to take the plunge and cull Division 7. It now has 1016 teams, like the Xpert Ladies after the latter's own cull a week or two ago, rather than 1528.

                            I presume we will thus see the other fifteen Xpert leagues follow suit over the coming three months or so, as they all cycle around to the end of their current seasons in turn.

                            I'm now wondering if they started with the Ladies when they did because it just happened to be the next to tick over to a new season after they finally elected to pull the trigger on going ahead with the restructuring, or if they specifically waited for the last few weeks so as to start with the Ladies league as a 'tester', i.e. not to risk unbalancing the Xpert leagues setup by using one of them as the guinea pig.

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                              Ah, good spot VA, and it's good to see some kind of action happening at long last. If I had to guess at your theories, I'd go with the former but without entirely discounting the latter. <geek>It depends how the databases are structured as they would likely have different tables for the teams, players, divisions, fixtures etc. But given they've culled divisions in the past I'd imagine there's a process they have, if not quite a big red button that does it all in one go.</geek>

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                                Yeah great spot VA, I've never been to that menu option. It's a good step they're taking, although looks like it won't be necessary for the Xpert International?

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                                  The Ghastly St Michael academy pop up with 18/6 defender Dheepan Krispaneven with hulk, ice cube and the cone of wonder. Thats 3 defenders that the academy have pushed through from here, all with the cone, in the past season and a half.

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                                    Lincolnshire Curly Coats once again fail to break through the Round 7 barrier in the Golden League Cup. Have to just focus on trying to get promoted from the bloody 3rd Division then.

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                                      Originally posted by Sits View Post
                                      Yeah great spot VA, I've never been to that menu option. It's a good step they're taking, although looks like it won't be necessary for the Xpert International?
                                      It will - if you check the league information page it has only 775 active teams at the time of writing. I've noticed that what happens at the start of a new season is phantom managers are created, presumably to stop the teams disappearing, and this gives the impression of the league being full until they all get deactivated again. So I'd guess the new season was created before they started this process of culling division 7.

                                      Meanwhile, today is the first OTF derby between my Tremadog Twitchers and VA's Redfaerne Island. We'll be thrashed I expect as our team is by far the weaker, but it'll be nice to see familiar faces.

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                                        Excuse a small trumpet blow, but can we end the Heineken season now please Sean? Isn't this what friends in high places is all about?

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                                          Brilliant win today Sits, tremendous stuff to dethrone the previously unbeaten Strumpet City – by defeating them on their own turf, too.

                                          I believe this means all three of us OTFers in the Premiership have taken a turn at the top already this season, amazingly enough.


                                          Elsewhere, unfortunately for SdR I won our inaugural derby in the Brythonnic, Rædfearne winning 2-0 at the Twitchers thanks to a brace from usually goal-shy 33-year-old midfielder Zacharias Wulferson – on what will be his final appearance for us, as he's leaving tomorrow after over three years at the club. Both he and fellow veteran Bran Branagh will leave this week, two days apart, after signing on consecutive days back in the old Brythonnic League: I think they might have been my final acquisitions there. It's one of those strange quirks that each seem to have spent their careers as 'defensive midfielders': X11 not formally recognising any such position, yet for no visible reason some midfield players seem to score a lot of goals whilst these two alas both fell into the opposite category, averaging only one strike about every ten games across 270-odd appearances.

                                          Sod's law said 35-year-old Branagh too randomly scored a hat-trick in one of his last matches for us this season, accounting for I think 1/8th of his lifetime tally, while Wulferson's brace today equals 1/14th of his. It put up top of the Second Division, too, so it remains to be seen whether my decision to put my faith in our players of tomorrow henceforth can keep us there...

                                          Edit: On a similar note of 'needs must' sales, and talking of Sod's Law – both Rædfearne Island and Royal Atlantis were broke this week and in desperate need of training cash, so Atlantis sold 24/11 junior goalie Magnus Good an hour ago for a club record-breaking 7.8m econs. Naturally, sole remaining keeper Harald Greycloak, only previously injured for 9 days in 12 seasons, picked up a 4-dayer against MJ's Tika-Taka this evening so is now a major doubt for Monday's clash with the Disco Pants. I am thus hoping hard that our academy miraculously pops out a great youth GK over the weekend!
                                          Last edited by Various Artist; 17-03-2018, 00:43.

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                                            On a completely different note, I was inspired the other day to try making some new X11 shirts after seeing, of all things, Dave Brailsford wearing a rather nice style of top in some newspaper photo accompanying coverage of Team Sky's current travails. So after looking around in The Human League and noting Holkham Forest are in off-the-peg VA Sports wear at the moment since leaving their 'braces' kits behind, I tried to use the look I had in mind to create some new kits that might suit them for next season, for example. So there's now a bunch of different colourways in the below style uploaded, including of course both red-and-black and black-and-red versions to keep AE happy, hopefully:

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                                              Oh they're lush VA. The bright green would work well for Sulawesi Babirusas' home kit; of course there would need to be an orange/white one for the Sulawesi flag-themed second kit...... But the off-the-peg white sashed ones currently in use are ace anyway so no sweat.

                                              And quite right, whilst drawing the Spots' current placing to the collective attention I should have acknowledged I am in fact the third (out of three) OTFer to top the Heineken this season.

                                              And skint? Tell me about it, I only have three teams with over 1m in the bank as of today; Nakuru Warthogs have 49k and the Spots 119k. And of course my teams don't have enough up and coming youths to raise cash at short notice.

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                                                Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
                                                On a completely different note, I was inspired the other day to try making some new X11 shirts after seeing, of all things, Dave Brailsford wearing a rather nice style of top in some newspaper photo accompanying coverage of Team Sky's current travails. So after looking around in The Human League and noting Holkham Forest are in off-the-peg VA Sports wear at the moment since leaving their 'braces' kits behind, I tried to use the look I had in mind to create some new kits that might suit them for next season, for example. So there's now a bunch of different colourways in the below style uploaded, including of course both red-and-black and black-and-red versions to keep AE happy, hopefully:

                                                Wow, they are lovely I'll have a look to see which of the Zeugma franchise is worthy.

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                                                  I seem to have accidentally deleted my earlier post. The gist of it was "Thanks, VA, these are magnificent."

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                                                    I saw it. It was a very nice post. Although it's now a bit blurred in my memory with your one about Iceland's socks.

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