Platinum - the start of a new era

 We are always worried when unseeded teams who have not done our due diligence by getting promoted out of Ruby get installed like a piece of new software in Platinum. This year unfortunately we had to expand Platinum to 16 instead of doing our usual fire sale in Ruby, as there were 13 teams in Platinum, and after conducting a few interviews obviously no one wanted to be relegated to Ruby instead. So here we go - 3 new teams that should or should not be there.


To complicate matters, one of the teams we promoted from Ruby to fill the 16 refused to go up as they preferred the greener pastures of Ruby (yes it is pleasant and the waters are cleaner out there) so we had to promote the 5th place team instead! We shall see how that experiment pans out.

So here we go. First weekend, two of the new installations in Platinum take on the stalwart teams who have plumbed the depths, gone to the tiniest stadia in our league, and did the 50-15s in Ruby. 


First up - Fake Gnus, a team formed most probably on the premise of being in the same time zone and being frustrated with teams who could not be in the same time zone. Essentially 3.5 players from Brisbane left their original teams and formed a new time zone coherent team, and added a few names in, so it looks like a new giant has been created in Platinum. 

Trivia Matters on the other hand have been with us since Season 0 (that's TEN seasons) and have never played anywhere beyond Platinum. They were on the verge of getting their ten season service award when they got relegated to the dreaded big R two seasons ago, couldn't escape on the first try despite being the joint second highest scoring team, and escaped on the second try but just were unable to break the finals. 


So - pundit wise it should be Fake Gnus 45 TM 38 or something like that.


But it was not meant to be, and TM proved that the world is sometimes fair, as they opened their first season back in Platinum with an empathic 41-30 victory over the Gnus. Welcome back TM, you never really felt too far away anyway from Plat.


BIT and Piece have had some frustrating seasons where they have been almost top of the league yet have somehow whimpered in the knockouts - just like TM, they had the unpleasant surprise of being accidentally relegated to Ruby a few seasons ago. It was like having Juventus in Serie D for a season and Ruby just sat around and allowed themselves to be steamrollered by B&P. Sadly after arriving back in Plat they've been top half but just about every season. 


They started off against Ruby Dooby Doo, who have gone through a few iterations (they would be the original QDeus even before QDeus) with a similar group of players - there was a team many years ago called Banshees of Inisherin, which was preceded by We are going through a Faiz, which last season was turned into Thala for a Reason. Now they are RDD and they had bought a few better players on the transfer market I think.


All however in vain as B&P basically whitewashed them 37-16 and told them who's boss. Thala for a Reason had an unreasonable 0-0-8 record last season and we do not expect it to be any better this season. 

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