The Finals!

Well, folks, we have made it to the end of our first season without Scott at the helm. Here are the final fixtures for this competition. Good luck to all teams!

Brooklyn Cup Final: Rasaritul Delta v Saltopus

Brooklyn Cup 3rd Place: Dirty Ratz v Ellwood

Das Losers Final: King's County United v Bajen Avalanche

Das Losers 3rd Place: Sea Lane v Valaraukar

All at neutral venues with cup rules please.

Knock-out Stage Begins

The order of the finishers after the Group Stage is as follows:

1) Saltopus
2) Rasaritul Delta
3) Dirty Ratz
4) Ellwood

5) Valaraukar
6) Bajen Avalanche
7) Sea Lane
8) King's County United

9) Maidstone Reunited

This means that, sadly, Stones are eliminated from the competition until next season.

The Brooklyn Cup semi-finals will be as follows:

Saltopus v Ellwood
Rasaritul Delta v Dirty Ratz

The Das Losers Invitational will be:

Valaraukar v King's County United
Bajen Avalanche v Sea Lane

As usual home teams are to set the challenge (Hint, hint, Melkor ;)). These will be a straight knock-out so cup rules please, folks! After the semi final round we will have the final round and third place play-offs so don't set up a friendly next week if you lose the semi ;)

Good luck to all!

Mid Season Round-Up

Half-way through the new season of the Brooky Cup and it seems as if the competition is all but decided.

Three teams have 100% records and appear to be going through unchallenged: Ratz, Saltopus and Delta. As things stand, Valaraukar are in the best runner-up position with a goal difference of 6.

With home advantage now switching round for the second half of the group games can the 'pack' start to claw their way back into the fight? Ellwood are only off the pace by one goal... can any of the others do some damage before the end?

Stay tuned, folks!

False start

It seems none of this week's matches have been arranged.

I think the best course of action is to put the start time back to next week.

I will msg every team and hopefully we will be off and running properly next week. Those of you hanging on for instructions you can go right ahead and sort out a friendly match.

Groups

Group tables and fixture lists can be found in the main menu on the right.

Here are the groups:

Group A: Dirty Ratz, Bajen Avalanche, Sea Lane

Group B: Ellwood, Saltopus, Maidstone Reunited

Group C: Rasaritul Delta, Valaraukar, King's County United

Home teams should issue the challenge according to the rules... I will update the rules and other sections of the website as soon as possible. Delta are the only team left in the cup so I have given them a bye for the first week.

Good luck to all!

Cup Start Date Is 4th September

Format is as follows:

1) 3 groups of 3 teams each.
2) Each team plays the other teams in their group twice (home and away) under 'normal' (i.e. not 'cup') rules.
3) The group stage will take 6 weeks (4 game weeks and 2 byes)
4) The three group winners and the highest runner up will go forward into the semi finals.
5) The next four highest losers will play the 'das losers invitational' knockout round.
6) The lowest loser has the 'honour' of gaining the 'wooden spoon' for this season.
7) If anyone else confirms by midnight Friday 31st August then they will be included and I will adjust the format to accommodate them.

Anyone have any comments/suggestions then please feel free to post.

New Cup Format

Currently these teams are going to be included in the next Brooklyn Cup:

Ellwood (177895) - Ready to go
King's County United (8457) - Ready to go
Maidstone Reunited (57203) - Ready to go
Saltopus (229252) - Ready to go
Sea Lane (71190) - Ready to go
Dirty Ratz FC (56406) - Ready to go
Bajen Avalanche (101308) - Ready to go
Rasaritul Delta (180587) - Still in cup
Valaraukar (55994) - Ready to go

We are still waiting for confirmation from:

Presidents (228484) - Ready to go
BrokenDial.com FC (71516) - Ready to go
Anfield IF (5279) - Ready to go
Reefs FC (60498) - Ready to go

If anyone knows of any other teams that may be interested then let me know and I will add them to the list.

We will not be using cupmanager this season as I don't have the necessary funds. However, I will be keeping track of the league as I used to do many moons ago. This also means we are free to alter the number of teams per league how we see fit.

All that remains now is to see how many of us are playing.

New Season Start

Okay, folks, we are approaching the new season of the BCup and I will be sorting out groups over the weekend. What would be really useful to me is if anyone who wants to take part could send me an email or message me in hattrick or add a comment on here then it would be much appreciated.

I don't really want to include non-participating teams in the league so please don't leave it too long to let me know.

If you have already answered my mails or added comments to this blog or the poll on the hattrick site then rest assured, you will automatically be included in the competition. Likewise I will assume anyone still in the BCup fed will want to take part so you will be included too.

If anyone has any new teams who have expressed an interest in joining then let me know too and I will contact them in game.

Future of the Brooklyn cup

As you will all know Scott and Boyd have quit Hattrick. As they pretty much ran the BCup between them then this leaves us in a bit of a pickle. I have passwords for the cupmanager site and have staged a coup with the federation (just call me El Presidente). This means we have the ability to seamlessly continue with the Cup as it has been run for the last few years.

The big question is, however, do we want to?

I have placed a poll on the fed conference so if you have voted there then don't worry about this post too much. But many of us are no longer Hattrick supporters and have no access to the fed conference (Also many of us are no longer active members of this blog... send me your email if you want to correct that).

Basically I want to know what you folks want to do. I am happy to run the comp and am also happy for someone else to do the same... but I don't want to do all the preparation for the coming season if noone plans to take part this time.

So let me know what you want me to do people. Do we lay the Brooklyn Cup to rest or do we continue under new management?

You decide! ;)

BC title goes to Romania - again!

Second time in a row!
Not bad for a team which few seasons ago was struggling to make it out of the groups!

This was a great game - it had nearly everything (except penalties) - lots of goals, missed chances, injuries, overtime drama...

End of the road, plus Ultimate Cage Match

Earlier this season, Scott and I both decided that after a great four-year run, this season of Hattrick would be our last. We will both be retiring after next week. We had hoped to meet in the B-Cup final to end it all, but unfortunately Ratz and Delta did not get the script!

However, we have decided to play the third-place consolation match as an Ultimate Cage Match, using all resources to try to win. We have agreed to use only our "normal" players, though. No rental players are allowed. I'm not sure that Scott and I have ever met in a truly competitive B-Cup match where both of us were trying to win. In fact, we have played only one match since September 2004. At any rate, it will be a nice way to go out.

Thanks to everyone for the years of fun, particularly to all the charter teams that were there from the first season.

Best of luck and best wishes to all.

Michael

One More Thing

Thanks to Claus and Head Rat for the kind words.

One more thing though.

For you guys overseas, it should be noted that hattrick actually taught me a ton about the real game of football. Aside from having some friends that contributed to my interest, Hattrick really taught me a ton about the game. So I'm pretty grateful for that. To the point that during this HT time I actually learned the keeper position in real life and have contributed to a real football squad as a result. Probably happened the other way around over there I would imagine.

I didn't even know what cups, counterattacks, form or set pieces really were before all this started.....

Cheers,
Sic

Farewell!

Gents-
The time has come to end the run in the B-Cup and actually HT in general. It's been a great run but time and even less interest are keeping me from continuing. Losing to Brooklyn FC yesterday in an epic battle was the way to go out yesterday. Congrats to Scotty. Losing to the B-Cup founder and my HT mentor (among other roles in my life) is appropriate.

I'll always revel in the fact that I never won the B-Cup. Oh wait, I mean I'll always regret never winning it. No matter, it's done and so is benditinbrooklyn/wind/ekfc. We'll be bankrupt and locked out soon enough. I may sell the entire team before then. Not quite sure yet, but what is sure is that I've played my last B-Cup match. I can at least be proud of the fact that I always gave you guys my best team, for the most part, when it counted,

For those overseas who I have enjoyed getting to know, I will still tune into the Blog and can always be reached at johnsic@gmail.com. Feel free to get in touch, esp if you happen to come out this way. Thanks to all who have spent their free time putting it together.

Good night and good luck.
John

Liverpool

Hello peeps. I'm thinking we may have lost Liverpool formerly known as SystemLoc formerly known as Prince......