PLATINUM - who's feeling hard done by?

 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 the others that tried to use it lost their webpage too in the same murky circumstances that AQL did recently!). PREM CHAMP S7 tried it first and universally it was regarded to have spat out the best 4 teams, with the only quibble that if you won first, you already had 2 packets under your belt and that it was almost impossible to recover from losing first. As far as I know, no team last season survived losing first, hence all QF1 winners eventually went through. (We also got a new champion for the 8th time, but more on that later as this is no more!)


This season hence we expanded it to PLATINUM and we are already bracing ourselves for the complaint letters. This season, it actually appears to have made more sense to lose first, as you then get to horsewhip other teams in the losers' playoff and rack up packets and/or points. Case in point, BIT AND PIECE who are probably feeling very, very hard done by this season. They came in to the KL Knockout QF in second place and delivered a comfortable win over WAGMI. They hence went into QF2 to the winners pool...and obviously had to play Nylon who have been close to unbeaten all season and show no signs of unravelling anytime soon. It was a close loss, but crucially, they closely lost both packets. 


WAGMI on the other hand came into this almost written off as relegation prospects, having lost both their opening matches but recovered nicely into third. They then slide into the losers pool quietly, and get to play the weakest team there, The Expendables, instead. So they were given the chance to roar to a resounding 42-25. So we have BP and WAGMI both tied on 2 packets, but with 69 points scored by WAGMI to BP's "mere" 67...WAGMI go through. 


What a nightmare, what a quirk of the system. The system also did not account for the fact that usually both teams of this level would have gone through - but Eureka Moment and Calicut Cartel both played to a draw THEN won their subsequent fixtures, hence occupying two precious SF spots with 1W1D. 


Only one team thus goes through with a perfect 2W (make it 6W thus far actually) record - Nylon, who had the pleasure of a big big trip to The Expendables and of course the aforementioned BIT and Piece. They have only lost one match...which will haunt BP too - to...none other than the so called undeserving WAGMI. So, it all goes to show that even if you are the unheralded underdog, beat the right Manchester City or Liverpool at the right time, and it'll all come back to you later.


So CONGRATULATIONS to Nylon, Eureka, Calicut and WAGMI for making our Platinum SF. All 4 teams are Gold alumni - so we have essentially sent the 3 teams up that came down last year if I am not mistaken. The winners of these SFs live in  no ambiguity - they go to the finals and win promotion as finalists. The losers of these SFs die another day in the 3/4th playoff, as we have decided that only three escape Platinum this season. But fret not warriors - teams inevitably drop out of Gold so you are always on the reserve list even if you are only fourth, as Urban Fervor and Insane Clowns Possessed found out to their joy last season.... 



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