summer season 09 - how the opposition are doing

FrankGrimes

Yep, it's crunch time next week for sure. Roys have a much better new keeper since the last time they played us and they've also got some very handy players that weren't playing in the game against us. So they're a strong and hard to beat team but if we take it to them there's no reason we can't get the win to give us a great lead going into the final stretch.

Their 3 players that stayed to watch our first 20 minutes last night won't have been impressed either so they'll be thinking they can win this one too.

helimachoptor

A real 6 pointer. Ket will be expected to pick up 3 points. So we really need a win.

just on another note, after having a quick browse through the other leagues... We have the 3rd best defence though one other team has played 2 games less than us.
A great achievement.

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homerjay2005

the standard gets higher and higher each year. 4 seasons ago when we entered the 10 team league for the first time, 33 points won the league. the year after we came 4th with 28 points. last season, we came 2nd on 39 points and looks like this season, we may need 47 points to win it.

long way to go yet.

FrankGrimes

Yeh the standard is definitely getting higher. There's at least 5 or 6 very decent well organised teams in this league, and that's excluding Glenwood who were an excellent team last season before their bizarre downturn this season (wonder if some of their squad decided to pack it in once they'd won medals). Wonder why that is - are Astro putting us in tougher leagues or is it just the general standard level is increasing? A positive trend either way.

homerjay2005

i think Glenwood are a Team of GAA players Jules and may have lost a few for the Summer. I think I am correct in saying, that they didnt enter a team in the summer league for the past 2/3 since we were set up, so that probably makes sense. still, they look to have alot of their players, so maybe just a lack of form, with a few players missing or not fully commited. remember, we always used to struggle in the summer with numbers due to holidays and travel. this year, we seem to have finally found a squad who are reliable and genuinly interested.

we are still in the same standard, just looks like more lads are playing it. If we win the league this year, would be nice to step up to divisions 2-7 in the Medium standard, BUT as we said before, we will only go up IF we win a league. long way to go yet and alot of hard work to do before that happens.

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19:15 WES1 Glenwood Rovers Ketamine Rovers
20:15 WES1 Shackthar Senseless Ravenhill
20:15 WES2 Bareassalona Fabulous Benedictine Monks
21:15 WES1 Perrem Design Hardware The full irish

Kets play Glenwood, potential upset there.

Full Irish are suffering from up and down results, but should beat PDH to stay in touch.

Of the other two games, Ravenhill are the most interesting, being our next opponents.

helimachoptor

Ket won 3-2.

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19:15 WES1 Glenwood Rovers v The full irish
19:15 WES2 Bareassalona v Roys Rovers
20:15 WES1 Ketamine Rovers v Fabulous Benedictine Monks
21:15 WES 1 Perrem Design Hardware v Shackthar Senseless

Bareassalona could upset Roys, but Ket will beat The Monks.

TFI Should beat Glenwood, and the other game in meaningless.

homerjay2005

ravenhills league position is slightly skewed by the fact they are 3 games behind, they could go 4th with winning those. not sure if they won or lost last week.

our challenge is simple, 5 wins from 5 and worry bout the other results after.

andrew71

We got a walkover from Glenwood last night.

FrankGrimes

Did yous only find out when you showed up and there was no Glenwood Andy or did they let you know in advance?

The site has Ketamine down as beating the Monks 3-0. Not sure if that game actually went ahead or if they got a walkover. Either way, it puts Ketamine above us on goal difference so we're in 3rd at the moment.

Still a lot to play for. For Ketamine it's in their hands as they play both Roys and us in their final 2 games. We need to win our last 4 games (including against Ketamine) and hope that Ketamine do a job on Roy's Rovers.

Ravenhill are good enough to take points off Roy's Rovers too so there's still a lot to play for....

andrew71

We got an email from Astro at about 4pm yesterday. Although I was talking to Tony the ref last week and he turned up to ref a game and one of the teams just didn't turn up (might have been the Monks).

Glenwood are struggling to find players, I think. Roy's Rovers beat them 9-0 a few weeks ago and I can only assume they were playing against 8 or 9 because Glenwood are a decent team when they have the full compliment.

Ravenhill are good too, they could easily take points of Ket and Roy's.

helimachoptor

Hopefully TFI can win against Ket next week

andrew71

We'll do our best. We owe them from earlier in the season.

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TFI are 11 points behind us, with only three games left.

We are guaranteed at least 3rd place, so more medals.

homerjay2005

so, 3 games left, we are 2 points behind.the ideal scenario is that Roys lose one game from their remaining 3 and we win our 3. Ketamine can defo beat them but they can also beat us.

weve alot of hard work to do to make sure this reaches the last game of the season.

homerjay2005

so it down to one game to finish 2nd. disappointing that we didnt take it to the last day to win it but i think Roys have finished very strongly.

loss of form cost us when they beat us and then ravenhill drew with us, but these things happen.

i think we are one player away from winning a league. collie was a major edition, but we lost mark and derek and conor then as the season went on.

if we get one CM in, i think we will be a stronger team as the rest will stay the same.

i cant really comment on the season as i missed most of the games, but looking at the stats, even if we finish 3rd, i think we have made progress and are a better team than 6 months ago, much down to the fact that we just play better ball now. finishing 3rd is not a step back, i think the league is stronger when you see first and 3rd from the last time finishing away down this time.

stats, with one game left -

we have scored the exact same amount of goals (42) as last season.
we have the exact same amount of clean sheets (7) as last season.
we have the same points (39) as last season.
we have conceded 6 goals less.

andrew71

Hopefully they'll sort out the league better for the winter. There seem to have been a huge amount of walkovers, especially late in the season.

It was a decent league though - pretty much all the teams were capable and there were some very good sides in it too. It's nice when it's that competitive.

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TFI

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Email from Astro

As we approach the end of season we want to say thanks to all for a great summer of football.

We hope you all enjoyed it and are looking forward to seeing you at the presentation night.

Venue: Alexander Hotel, Fenian Street, Dublin 2
Date: Thursday September 10th
Time: From 8pm
Entertainment: Race Night in aid of Our Ladys Hospital, Crumlin.

All are welcome.

More details will follow.

LeixlipRed

Derek was the only player with real quality we lost. And he didn't play once this season. We need a CM and a left footed player with Lepo possibly not around next season.

FrankGrimes

Agree with most of the above, we've improved a lot in a higher standard league and only need a couple of tweaks to move to the next level to win the league and yeh there's only 1 or 2 players we need to improve, depending on how often the current squad will be available.

Remember we have Iain to come back too - if he's fully fit that'll be a positive, though agree we would ideally need one more specialist centre-midfielder: Collie v2.0 would do the job nicely.

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FrankGrimes wrote: »

Collie v2.0 would do the job nicely.

I'm working on it

helimachoptor

Any word on friendlies for the off season?

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helimachoptor wrote: »

Any word on friendlies for the off season?

Who's organising them?

helimachoptor

Des wrote: »

Who's organising them?

I would presume the same person who organised the last seasons??

Doodee

helimachoptor wrote: »

Any word on friendlies for the off season?

Want to get a mix of players like for the TV game?

If yaz do then Myself and the Italian would be around for it.

FrankGrimes

Yeh in fairness lads Des should at least get a break during the off season and we should organise the friendlies ourselves.

Potential opposition:

The Full Irish
Sav's Team
Boards Random Heads (as with the TV thing I'd say we'd easily find a decent 11 to play against).
That other forum we played against a while back (Foot.ie?)

We should also be looking to get a few 5-a-side games going to keep things ticking over and ensure we are all getting a regular run about.

We need a few volunteers to organise different aspects of it. I'll offer to arrange some things but only if a few others chip in (and not just those that read the forum either - we should discuss at the match next week).

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Thanks for all of that Jules.

Especially this part.

FrankGrimes wrote: »

Yeh in fairness lads Des should at least get a break during the off season

I've already done some "in the open" work for the new season, and some other "behind the scenes" work too.

I'll be chasing the money for god knows how long, and that is frustrating enough in itself, without having to get involved with everything else too.

The perfect scenario would be if an email pops into my inbox sometime in the next week or so, from Astro, telling us that they are organising another pre-season competition. Which will take the whole organisational thing out of everyone's hands.

I do have one friendly lined up, the usual August game on grass, I do hope we can pull a team together for that, as I'd like to actually win the trophy this year. That's an aside though, and the real deal is getting playing on the normal Astro surface to keep ourselves ticking over.

One thing I'll say about that.

I do feel some people took the actual results of the games in pre-season last time a little too seriously.

They are games for trying new players, people in potential new positions and for making mistakes. If we lose, we lose and we move on. If we win, that's a bonus. I don't want anyone getting bogged down with results this time round. Hassling me and Mick to make changes to get the "right" result.

The right result from any pre-season games, as far as I'm concerned, is getting new lads in, getting them playing with us and used to us. That's all.

We can worry about results when the new season starts.

Right now though, I'm concentrating on next tuesday, then a couple of weeks without having to bother about the team.

emc2

FrankGrimes wrote: »

Potential opposition:

The Full Irish
Sav's Team
Boards Random Heads (as with the TV thing I'd say we'd easily find a decent 11 to play against).
That other forum we played against a while back (Foot.ie?)

.

2 other teams that spring to mind are:

Iain's work mates
Poker Forum (think they played the soccer forum a couple of times)

possibly Ed and Ciaran's Saturday team for pre-season or Martin's