Subject: National Team

Not that this means much atm, but at the halfway stage here's how qualifying is looking and the baskets teams would be in if the draw was made now.

1. Deutschland 15 74-2
1. Nederland 15 66-1
1. Eesti 15 53-2
1. Romania 15 47-1
1. Polska 15 46-2
1. Espana 15 43-3
1. Ceska Republika 15 43-4
1. Suomi 15 37-2
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1. Hrvatska 15 31-4
1. Belgie 13 61-5
1. Italia 13 44-1
1. France 12 42-2
1. Mexico 12 29-0
1. England 12 18-3
1. USA 9 14-2
2. Scotland 13 34-2
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2. Island 12 55-5
2. Argentina 12 51-3
2. Slovensko 12 49-6
2. Srbija 12 40-3
2. Magyarorszag 12 44-8
2. Lietuva 12 34-3
2. Schweiz 12 32-4
2. Australia 12 30-7
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2. Belarus 12 28-9
2. Norge 10 34-8
2. Danmark 10 20-9
2. Chile 9 19-7
2. Sverige 9 8-10
2. Brasil 8 14-3
3. Uruguay 12 24-7
3. Osterreich 10 42-7
________________________

(Fail to Qualify)
3. Portugal 9 54-3
3. Rossiya 9 43-14
3. Colombia 9 27-6
3. Venezuela 9 27-11
3. Ireland 9 23-11
3. Slovenija 9 16-12
3. Cymru 9 13-10
3. Bulgaria 9 13-14
3. Senegal 9 14-31
3. Turkiye 8 26-8
3. South Africa 7 8-8
3. Peru 6 14-12
3. Canada 6 11-14
(edited)

Well we're set to take on Eesti tomorrow. Don't really know what to expect with our 2nd XI's. I guess the main thing from the game is to rest the key players. Not as much effort as usually from myself as I'm heading down the coast for the long weekend, although I've still hopefully set up a reasonably competitive tactic to try and take the game. Hopefully we can sneak an unexpected result :).

Well 0:10...wasn't a good idea to play such a game. Their 'reserve' strikers are 2x divine + brilliant...

I did warn cometer but as Austria is the priority, he made the right decision considering we do make and concede an awful lot of fouls.

I didn't try to be very creative thinking that you won't have the material to try anything deadly and if you did, we'd still nail it with pure strength and that's exactly what happened. It wasn't pretty.

Good luck next week, though!
(edited)

meh, could have cut the margin in half if I actually had the time to sit down and work a tactic rather than a 5minute rush job. Had short notice as well and went down the coast for the weekend. Main thing was to rest the 1st XI players for next week and anything after that was a bonus.

Actually tbh, this is just after thought anyway and means nothing as the end result is the same but I count the result being only 2-0 had I any decent amount of time to set the tactic. 8 of the 10 goals came from the wing crossing, which would have been cut out had I made a tactic rather than randomly selected one. Still I apologise for the poor result, decided to duck down the coast for the long weekend. Noticed my club side got smashed too :p. Ah well, we've always got next week which is far more important.
(edited)

it's too late for excuses :)

it's the earliest time I can make excuses :p.

Who needs them anyway...
- the squad has been rested for the big game next saturday.
- we're not giving anything away to be scouted
- ranking pts dont really matter at this point

apart from the scoreline it's not that bad... ^^

Losing big to the 3rd ranked team probably didn't hurt the ranking all that much anyway.

It matters not. Next weekend is what matters. :)

decided to duck down the coast for the long weekend. Noticed my club side got smashed too :p

I saw you down the coast! Not good enough dave! Ive still got the 1 goal advantage over you :-D

Well get a chance of redemption this weekend. Can we secure our spot in the world cup next season with another win against Austria? Expecting them to change it up a little bit from last time, they can't really afford to take a risk in playing the same tactic and hoping we change up, whereas we can quite easily take a risk and go in with something quite similar. In saying that Austria have to come and attack us as a draw will still see us ahead of them. Makes for an interesting game.
(edited)

Pretty confident I've got everything ready for the game tonight. In about an hour we'll know if we need to gain points off Belgium to be safe or not but I'd think at this stage we're looking fairly comfortable. Hopefully we can come up trumps one more time though.

You cant sell the bear's skin before you've shot it...

that said, good luck for that one... :)

That's pretty ridiculous, let's throw 80m long balls through defense where the defenders have extremely high pace and let them nail every shot every time. Why can't we do the same back at them, I swear that was an undeserved victory for Austria 6 goals from 7 shots is insane.

Probably played Broxton a tad too aggressively, but even so I thought the result was harsh and we didn't deserve to get beaten. I'm sure Austrians will think differently.

What the...this engine is just 'irresponsible'...