AQL Season 8 IYKYK updates

 After another torrid KL System - we have a set of semifinalists! 120 DAYS OF SODOR, after the horror and indignity of playing in last season's relegation playoffs, were never going to let this repeat itself, and consolidate with a nice 46-32 against The Syndicate. Sodor are now already odds on to be the first team to win the title twice - something amazing considering no team  has never won the title more than once before. So with 8 seasons behind us we have had 8 champions, but this season it is meant to be that a team finally mounts the podium twice. Considering how many world leagues essentially have the same team win it 8 years in a row, and a galacticos of some sort, this is unprecedented in high level sport of any sort. MATUNGA join the two win club (and have the additional pleasure of avoiding Sodor till the finals) after consigning Motley Crew to their first defeat this season. Unfortunately they have also accumulated a draw on the way so MC go out to the 5th-8th plac...

 After 4 weeks languishing in match report less-ness, I don't think anyone can follow anything anymore apart from the comparatively straightforward Champ round robin - you win you go up, and vice versa. So let us count the ways! CROUCHING MIMIR have not quite won the title yet but to get promoted you need to finish in the top three. Thus far it is mathematically possible albeit somewhat practically unlikely that the 9-point team will successfully catch up with the 12-point team, since the 12-point team has won everything so far except Blind Dates. Though you must say Never Say Never, as the final two matches are against the volatile lads from Mango Go Go and the ever dangerous Tequila Mockingbird. Anyway as mentioned - MIMIR went up from Gold and went back down promptly, but they have come back so so much stronger. (And have bought someone on the market too I suspect) BLIND DATES are about to go up too I suspect but they have a tricky last two dates against You Lot and a weird one ...

 GOLD has finally ended their slightly off the grid 7 match round robin followed by their extremely super straightforward crossover finals. If only each league could have 16 teams like Gold! Alas every year we have top two division teams rage quit after a relegation that was enforced or a promotion that was not to be, and hence Gold usually is like quantum physics - it just kind of stretches to fit whatever dark matter needs to go in there before the Platinumate sieve. CHILTERN CHILLIES literally showed the world why they should NOT have been relegated, and pulled off the perfect season, dropping one miserly packet in the process (against one of the relegated to Platinum sides no less!) To put things into stark perspective - in their final two matches where angels would have feared to tread, they horsewhipped the two teams right under them (Lethe it Be and Carpal Diem) by 14 and 16 points respectively. These are margins that Premiership sides spend an entire season accumulating and...

 When we invent a system there are always haters no matter which way around you do it - the only fair league is one without a finals, IMHO, but in Season 3 we realised we could make so much more TV rights money from inventing finals for leagues that might not even need one (eg The Gold league that year had one due to a sudden influx of decent but not quite Prem teams to 16 teams) - and there were so, so many dead games in a round robin format which was just two teams struggling to make the weekend scheduling work for the ninth time out of twelve. So we did away with the round robin system in S4 and it has worked wonders for us ever since, as we receive complaint after complaint annually filed about the unfairness of our knockout system. Last season we hence invented the KL Knockout (Wikipedia still has not acknowledged our herculean efforts yet, perhaps due to lack of a randomised controlled trial?) which AFAIK is not used by any other league in the world with a webpage (Or perhaps...

 Hi all! Can't keep me away from writing these posts for long - but thought a few matchdays was sufficient punishment for the 22 people who actually liked reading them. I have (and will be) migrating to this IYKYK platform now to write them, and because they are not public like FB is, they will be vitriolic and highly caustic, as I have nothing to lose from pissing off the Platinum Mastercard holders of AQL. So be it - you were not invited to read this blog so don't get offended or go all woke on me if you stumble upon criticism you were not supposed to read in the first place! I have had to restart writing as there genuinely were teams that did not know what was happening to them (yes the data driven approach genuinely does not work for everyone and prose is a wonderful method of communication indeed). RUBY has ended quite oddly, exactly how it did last year - all teams from ONE side (Klang if I am not mistaken) won in the recently concluded quarterfinals, leaving Option One (...