Contents this issue: Letters to the EditorWords of Wisdom: Commissioner's Notes (by proxy)
Pontification: Who gets to shoot?
Guest Pontification: Mobile('s) Defense
Forum: The "perfect" roster answered
What good is the midfield?
Mistake of the Week
Random thoughts for new managers
Before we get started, let me ask if there is any interest in some- thing. Very few SPARF matches get televised (c'mon, guys! :-)), so we here in Wallamaloo are starting up a cable outlet. If you subscribe to cable station KWPD, it means you send in the scouting report of your opponent that week. Everyone who sends in a scouting report (no editing, please) will get every other scouting report everyone else sent in. If I get enough requests for subscription (Make the Subject: KWPD), I'll start "broadcasting" next week. Moving right along...
Some questions from a Novice:
1) What is all this about money? I have not seen anything in my team lists, etc and would not know anything about my cash flow. Is it important?
Well, this is a good one. Mel promised to say something about this sometime, but for the time being, I'll spout off what I know. Mel mailed the managers last season a list of what money was for, including rehiring coaches, buying hospital insurance, and laying down astroturf. To be honest, I think these features got the axe, with the possible exception of rehiring coaches. Anyone who doesn't remember/never got the message from Mel to which I am refering, let me know and I'll print it next week or send you a copy, depending on the demand. I mean, you get $25K a week + $2K for every win if you are playing at home (road teams always get $25K), and I KNOW I had less than $300K to start the season, so I must have spent money on SOMETHING. Coaches? Over- head? Astrology? Beats me. Just don't spend all your money until Mel gets back, eh?
For right now, money is useful for signing free agents and buying players from other teams. And save some in case Mel says we need it.
2) Do we get match reports showing who scored the goals and derrieres?
Ah ha! See below in Section B. ----- I found your first newsletter very interesting. With a bid more input from new and old managers on suggesting as the season goes on it could really get going then. Having a look at your 'RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR NEW MANAGERS' section, I would have agreed with your statement that you ARE going to lose to the top returning teams, but I am not fully convinced.
My first game was against the Cambridge Tigers. If I am right, they were a team that did very well last season. Initially seeing that they won 50-44 I thought that we tried our best and we were unfortunate. However, then I saw the scouting report and I was amazed to see the stats for his players. There was 1 player with exceptional ability (70-80), 2 outstanding abilities (60-70) and 10 terrific stats (50-60). Comparing his team to mine, which had only one very good stat (40-50) you would have thought we would have been thrashed, but we weren't. I do not know if this was luck or what, but I would not be willing to put money on the Cambridge Tigers, or any other team with such stats, beating all the new managers that he plays against.
Well, live and learn. I sure got clobbered by the Redwoods. In general, the scores seem a lot lower this year (I mean a LOT lower, like 70%). See Section C for a possible explanation of something, but in all, I just can't explain it. But congratulations on your first match in any event!
Commisioner's Notes:
Mel's schedule did not allow an actual tip from the Commissioner's desk, but he did drop a throwaway comment in a mail message that I think could be useful, especially to newer managers.
Look at the "Magic Table" of Fatigue. First of all, it's easy to memorize, so do it. A little trick: the first line is 1 2 3 5 7 10 15, and from there everything follows the same pattern. Okay, now with the pre- liminaries out of the way, look at the left column:
1 2 3 4 5-6 7-9 10-14 etc.
Point one: I stop at 14, because I cannot imagine anyone putting more than 14 people in a training group. Write me if you ever have and have not regretted it. But more importantly (point two), look at how most managers refer to this left column:
1 2 3 4 6 9 14
There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON (short of an awkward number of players) to put 7 players (or worse, 10) in a training group. 5 either. It becomes very important that your learn to plan enough to take advantage of these (artificial) boundaries in the training table: a move of one or two players can result in much better skill allocation for your entire team.
By the way, did you know that you can get reprints of information, scouting reports, box scores, and even the raw stats of EVERY PLAYER in EVERY MATCH who actually did something (scored, marked, or even MISSED)? How about that! Mel's routine for statistics is called Munch, and if you put Munch in your subject line, you'll get stuff back. The format of the Subject: line in your mail must be:
Subject: Munch: myscout
Here, myscout (the scouting report of your very own team, something the Editor deems extremely useless since you KNOW WHAT YOU DID) may be replaced with any of the following terms:
all scouting (your opponent) myscout (you) rawstats (who shot, scored, marked) roster (the most recent roster you have on file) results (the box scores with injuries and scores)
Anything in the message body will be ignored. Enjoy!
BTW, I think there is a way to get previous weeks' stuff as well, but for right now, inserting "Week 1" in the Subject: line resulted in an error, so stick it out until Mel can say something definitive.
So now I know that the three mobile players are the most important on the field (see Issue 1). But who gets to shoot? Is a ROV more likely to shoot than a RKR? If the RKM is responsible for getting the tough loose balls, does that mean he needs a lot more Scramble than Kick?
Well, this really IS pontification, because I have no bloody idea. However, I looked at my match reports and such. and it seemed that the people on WPD who got shots got them in the following order: RKR, ROV, RKM. This depends on your opponent, of course, and the Defense/Scramble his mobile players have. Which brings us to this week's guest pontification.
This week's guest pontificator: Dave Helmbold, California Redwoods
[Editor's Note: This is a REALLY GOOD TIP. It explains a couple of my more mysterious waxings last season. It is not really pontification in the truest sense of the word, but I like Section C.]
Avoid Defense Deficiency for Mobiles
Early in the first season I decided to try the following strategy. I emphasized offense in my mobiles and created some super fixed-position defenders. I had a long losing streak after my mobile's defense atrophied. Most of my opponents in these losses looked (from the scouting reports) to be no better than mine, and some seemed clearly worse.
I asked Mel what I was doing wrong and he pointed out that my lineup's main disadvantage was in the defensive abilities of my mobiles. After adjusting my training and lineup to improve my mobile's defense I did much better. The end of the story comes with the SPARF finals where I played the Cambridge Tigers. Although it looked like Cambridge had the better players, their lineup looked like the one I was striving for at the beginning of the season. I am convinced that this is one of the main reasons we were able to win the championship, and increased my belief that the mobile players must be good defenders.
One (possibly incorrect) way to view a SPARF game is as a series of 6-on-6 encounters. When the ball is at midfield, both side's centers, wings, and mobiles are trying to advance it. If your opponent succeeds, their mobiles and half-forwards will try to advance the ball further (or maybe take a shot) while your mobiles and half-backs play defense. If your mobiles are poor defenders then it is likely that two or three of the 6 opposing players will be open and they will have no trouble advancing the ball further.
Dave Helmbold,
California Redwoods
Instead of splicing together the various responses I got about the size of the perfect roster, I will mention some overall observations that seem fairly consistent.
Because you need 18 players and will absorb a few injuries, most people agreed that they needed about 24 everyday players (here, "everyday" should probably be viewed as "less than 10 fatigue so that he can play and stand a decent chance of not lacerating a kidney"). But one point that some managers made is that you can usually afford to have a "taxi squad" of 4-6 (or even more) players that do nothing but get "cranked" at fatigue 4 every week so that they will be the starters of tomorrow. Is this enough? Well, figure that maybe 10 of your starters are Age 3 or greater (unless you have made some really interesting deals): the Age 3 folks will be good next season, but I wouldn't depend on the Age 4's. That means that you should plan on blowing out all 5 Age 4 players and losing a couple/three more to double- injury (remember: a week in the hospital = 5 off EACH SKILL). Of course, you can buy free agents during the season. In any event, depending on how you think the season will go, it looks like we reach consensus on about 30 players: 24 + 6, with some managers having smaller taxi squads and some with larger cores and taxi squads. Does this mean you've done something wrong with your 26 players or your 37 players or your 32 players? Of course not. But learning to think about your roster in these terms can help you formulate a better overall strategy.
This week's topic: How important are the midfielders? Should you stack your offense and defense and forget the midfield, or should you try to dominate the middle ground in the hopes that your mobiles can take over from there?
This week's mistake comes courtesy of the Montreal Maulers and their manager Francois-Dominic Laramee.
A player who is Age 4 and spends the winter on the beach will likely lose around 30-40 skill points (if he has that many to begin with) and is very unlikely to be good enough to be a starter at Age 5. Even Age 3 players are dangerous: my all-star Fullback, who had a whopping 57 defense at the end of season 1, came back with only 36 or so at the beginning of training camp...
Do not spend too much of your few skill points on old players. Age 4's get hurt by a breeze and will lose all of them anyway. Train your age 1 and 2 guys; it will be more profitable in the long run.
[Editor's Note: Note also, however, that the amount of skill a player loses at season's end is proportional to BOTH Age and Skill. That is, not every Age 3 players will lose 21 skill levels at Defense alone, unless they had a lot to lose. But Francois is right: older players are more open to injury, and should not be depended as team fixtures.]
How do you choose a substitute? Is he just the 19th (20th) best player on your team? Is he the 7th best offensive player? Is he the only other guy on your roster with single-digit fatigue?
These aren't bad criteria, but think about this: a substitute isn't going to play a whole match by definition. If you follow any sort of analog to the "Fatigue 4" bogusrule I pontificated on last week, your players are unlikely to fall apart right away. That means that, if you have the soul of a gambler, that you can pop a higher-fatigue player at sub than you normally would feel safe with in the starting lineup. I did this so often I thought Mel's software had a bug. However, he has since told me that other managers HAVE HAD SUBS INJURED, so be careful. But on the other hand, you might want to try giving that star a week off, "cranking" him, and making him IC1 or IC2. That way, he is less likely to be injured, but could give you that needed edge in a tight match. Just remember: higher fatigue = more severe injury (= more skill loss, more time unavailable, etc.), so this type of thing isn't for the faint of heart, or for those of you who decided to run 22-man rosters...