Talk about parity!

OK...parity.

I'm calling ours "The Group of Dearth".
No former champions, no former runners-up, as far as I know. Good group of personalities in this group, though, if that makes up for things. We should have some good conversations about our mediocre teams....;-)

I'm not sure if any of us even made the B-Cup last season. Wind or Maidstone, perhaps?
Well, a couple of us may do our best San Diego Padres imitations and limp into the B-Cup later this season. My strategy is the opposite of last time: start out slow, and come on strong at the end. Same as in my IV league, where I'm still undefeat-ing.

GROUPS AND FIXTURES

The draw for group play is finished and the groups are listed below. Groups and fixtures are also fully listed on the Cupmanager page. Can you spot the Group of Death?

Cup play begins NEXT WEEK (November 1-2), so home teams should issue challenges beginning on Thursday. Fate was good to us here because Tigers and Ellwood, the two teams still in their national cups, were drawn together and have their first match against each other. Also, each group wound up with at least one European team and one American team.

They look like interesting groups, should be a fun season. If anyone has questions, feel free to contact me. Good luck to everybody!

GROUP A
Brooklyn FC
Delta
CTFC
Sea Lane

GROUP B
Bonafide
KCU
System
Avalanche

GROUP C
Direwolf
Brooklyn Wind
Saltopus
Maidstone

GROUP D
Tigers
Ellwood
Dirty Ratz
Genetic Freaks

Seeding Groups

The draw for B-Cup Groups will be held soon. As a reminder, each group will have one team drawn from each of the following "pots", which are determined by last season's finishing positions, together with the new rules (i.e., Direwolf goes into the first pot as the DLI Champion, and Sea Lane goes into the fourth pot as the replacement for the relegated Presidents).

POT 1: Bonafide, Le Tigre, Brooklyn FC, Direwolf

POT 2: KCU, Wind, Delta, Ellwood

POT 3: Ratz, The 'Pus, System, CTFC

POT 4: Avalanche, Maidstone, Freaks, Sea Lane

Re: Tony Tuesday

I almost sense some sympathy behind this award. Who is the author again? ;-)

I'd like to express my Congrats to the first winner. It's hard to deny BFC this award right now. They are well deserving. Hopefully with the prize money, Scott can patch up the covered wagon in time for the move West (with a long stop in Vegas I predict).

I will work harder to win the TT award next time. I often speak an toungues, make good pizza. Judging from the criticism of my Raiders post, apparently I do annoy women... :-o

...If that type of comment doesn't clinch it for me, check out how poorly my team is performing in IV...

The First Annual Tony Tuesday Award

(Thanks Boyd, for reminding me about this!)

The first Annual Tony Tuesday Award goes to: Brooklyn FC. (Runner Up: Saltopus)

Let me give you a little bit on the criteria. First, there has to be some modicum of success to win the Tony Tuesday Award. Also, there has to be some tragedy as well. Tony Tuesday is a drunk at a local dive bar here in Brooklyn who makes pizzas for a living. He annoys women, speaks in toungues, and is a generally disgusting figure. But he probably makes good pizza. It's all good here in Brooklyn.

In awarding Brooklyn FC the first Annual Tony Tuesday Award, Im taking a few things into consideration. These are:

1. A decent run in the Brooklyn Cup
2. Losing to upstart KCU TWICE in the Group stage
3. Seeing his good friend, Michael Boyd of Bonerfried, win the Cup before him as the founder of the Cup is his own little personal tragedy, escpecially when going into the season he thought this might be 'his year' given the safe series position compared with Bonerfriend fighting for a Qualifier.
4. Having Brooklyn FC leave Brooklyn is a tragedy for us in Brooklyn.

Saltopus could not have come closer in the voting by beating Ratz twice and not making the Finals. His post about the Raiders didn't help him either.

Just Win Baby!

As sports history parallels go, Brooklyn Football Club's move back to the West is more like the Oakland Raiders, who adjourned to Los Angeles for awhile, before the inevitable yo-yo back to Oaktown. Not that Brooklyn is anywhere as bad as LA...but I understand that lately Scott has been sporting some Run-DMC-style sweatsuits and slicked-back, greying hair, a la Mr. Al Davis:

http://espn-i.starwave.com/media/nfl/2000/0509/photo/s_davis.jpg

The Raiders' escape from LA was the first step in the collapse of (American) pro football in Los Angeles, so let's hope that BFC's movement is the last exodus from Brooklyn, not the first of many. And for those of us already in Northern California: We welcome you back, our prodigal son, with open arms...and open piggy banks as we prepare to pay for personal seat licenses in your soon-to-be-relocated BFC stadium.

CUP WATCH

Once again, here's a little status report that I'll update weekly...

THROUGH ROUND 6

Still Alive (and Holding Us Back)

Ellwood
Le Tigre

Done and Ready to Rumble!

System
Ratz
BFC
Avalanche
Delta
KCU
Direwolf
[Sea Lane]
Bonafide
Wind
Freaks
[Anfield IF]
Saltopus
Maidstone
CTFC

The First Qualifier

For all of you junkies that are going through withdrawal from B-Cup drama, please note that you can tune in on Tuesday for the first ever Brooklyn Cup Qualifier, which will be coming to you live from the hospitable climes of the Rat Hole.

We had two main candidates to fill the open slot. One is Sea Lane, who played in the B-Cup way back in Season 20, before his deep US Open Cup campaigns made it difficult to participate. (Sea Lane is also managed by our neighborhood buddy Julian. Julian is the guy who first recommended Hattrick to Scott and me, and got us involved and addicted. Then Scott and I dragged John Sic into it shortly thereafter. So Julian is really the primary reason that Scott, Sic, and I play this game to begin with.)

The other team is Anfield IF, managed by Dennis, who is a friend and current league-mate of Claus. Dennis has been interested in joining us for some time, but of course we haven't had an available slot until recently.

We didn't want to have to choose between two great guys, so the best thing to do is let them slug it out on the field. The winner will play with us this season, while the loser will be eligible for qualification next season. (Along with Presidents and maybe some others.)

Good luck to both teams!

The Brooklyn International Cup

Rumours abound that Brooklyn FC and Brooklyn Cup founder Scott Santandrea is up and moving his team from Brooklyn to San Francisco. It's reminiscent of the great Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants Baseball clubs in the late fifties who moved out west in search of riches in the quickly growing cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"Brooklyn losing Brooklyn FC is almost eqivalent to Brooklyn losing the Dodgers in '58. We thought Clinton Street had just extended it's lease with the club but apparently Haight-Ashbury offered a little more green and a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow." said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. "At least we still have Brooklyn Cup champs FC Bonafide and the up and coming clubs of Kings County United and The Brooklyn Wind holding steady. Cheers to them."