With Tama's victory over ToF (1-5 vs Classiest at the time of this writing) our playoff chances are officially gone and our season is over. I want to make sure to sincerely thank the vast majority of my team, most of whom put in a very high level of effort, tested a ton, were very positive contributors and I sincerely enjoyed teaming with. I don't want to do one by one shoutouts because it'll just come off as a callout for the one or two people I don't have a glowing review about, but a couple of you guys were seriously among the very best teammates I've ever had in 10+ years of mons. I also want to specifically thank BluBirD252 roudolf13 SFG who were not officially "on the team" but were with us and helping us out the whole way. BluBird put in more time and effort than 95% of players in this tournament and deserves to get picked for every side tour ever going forward- he's a huge asset.
This finish is obviously not what any of us were hoping for our expecting. I, and the power rankings, thought I drafted a strong squad that was going to be in the playoff mix. We absolutely underperformed relative to our talent level and frankly, just as coaches yell at players about turnovers being a killer in (American) football, we simply had too many giveaways to deserve a playoff spot. We had, conservatively, at least half a dozen outright won games where for whatever reason we simply choked in the final couple turns and gave it away. If we cut that number in half, nevermind outright eliminate them, we'd be in a very different place right now. More than anything else, uncharacteristic chokes really plagued and doomed us this year.
Believe it or not, even with the pre-tour drama surrounding me managing, even with our terrible start, even with some of the chokes, even with some historically really good players clearly underperforming this SPL, our team environment was actually really really good from start to finish. There are really a lot of positives and things that make me happy that I'll take away from this. I'm sincerely proud of my team for battling all the way back from a terrible 0-2-1 start to a position where we're in legitimate mathematical playoff contention in the final week. I'm proud of the half dozen guys on the team who were putting in 50+ test games every single week no matter what and were always a positive presence in the chat. I'm proud of the willingness of almost everybody to move to a different tier or do whatever we asked them to do if we thought it was best for the team. I'm proud that our team environment never soured or became toxic through all the nonsense. I definitely learned a few things from this experience that will absolutely help me grow and improve as a manager as a human being going forward. I'm sincerely appreciative for opportunity to have this experience and by and large I really liked and really enjoyed the guys on our squad. Thank you, sincerely, for taking this ride with me. I also want to specifically thank BKC, who had my back start to finish and fought for me to be able to manage this tour.
My biggest piece of (constructive) criticism for this tour going forward is as follows- In the same vein as the Ojama incident last year, I think way more still needs to be done regarding players only being willing to put in what would be considered a fair and reasonable level of effort if they land on a specific team. I thought with this being SPL- the big, ultra-prestigious tournament that everybody puts soooo much emphasis on and cares about soooo much- that this would more or less not be an issue save one or two unsavory personalities. It was a rude awakening for me that this was very much not the case. Pre auction, Lax told me "it would be a pretty terrible situation" if he were to end up on our team and he even messaged me on SmogTours mid-auction while I was bidding on him with some spam message and exclamation points making it clear he did not want me to continue bidding on him/he didn't want to play for me. FlamingVictini told me pre-auction "I'm not sure what my level of motivation will be" and "I certainly would not be any more motivated on the Tigers". I found out for the first time with the pre-tour drama that apparently EO really dislikes me and has a huge problem with me and he made himself completely unavailable to talk to (turning off Smogon DMs and Discord messages and making himself entirely unreachable) so attempting to patch things up or even have a conversation was impossible. And then, two players who I actually did purchase, Dice and Watashi, definitely fell into this camp as well. Watashi refused to test whatsoever, even a single game, said next to nothing in the chat, clearly half-assed it in the games and gave zero Fs and then started trying when we traded him to Ruiners. When I politely and calmly asked him how I can help him/where I can slot him moving forward, he responded as follows- "Is this your first time teaming with me?". Me "Yes". Him- "Well I don't put effort into any Pokemon tour so that's that". And in Dice's case he was outright MIA for two of his matches, getting us (what would have been) two activity losses while also outright refusing to test all tour long. Something tells me if he had landed on a team with ABR or someone he likes and values highly his behavior would have been noticeably different.
Although none of the players above explicitly said "I will not play for you" or "I refuse to play for you", they all managed to convey that message very clearly without being stupid enough to outright say those specific words. In at least a couple of these cases it should be crystal clear that the behavior of these players was in violation of the rules. Players who openly admit they don't care/aren't trying/won't try or who randomly don't show up for their matches because they don't care or who refuse to test or put in any effort at all should not be allowed to play in this tournament. It can, and does, ruin the tournament for an entire team. For the fairness and integrity of the tournament, more absolutely needs to be done to enforce the "any and all players are expected to put forward a certain level of effort for any team they get purchased by" portion of the rules. This behavior exists because we, as a community, allow it to. People do this because a blind eye is turned to it and they know there are no repercussions. If we truly value the fairness and integrity of this tour, and if the rules here actually mean anything, a pretty serious crackdown needs to take place here.
One more time, thank you sincerely to the vast majority of my team for making this as positive of an experience as it was ever going to be all things considered and thank you for the opportunity to be a manager in this tournament. Maybe just maybe I can get another shot, minus the pre-tour distractions and drama, next year?
This finish is obviously not what any of us were hoping for our expecting. I, and the power rankings, thought I drafted a strong squad that was going to be in the playoff mix. We absolutely underperformed relative to our talent level and frankly, just as coaches yell at players about turnovers being a killer in (American) football, we simply had too many giveaways to deserve a playoff spot. We had, conservatively, at least half a dozen outright won games where for whatever reason we simply choked in the final couple turns and gave it away. If we cut that number in half, nevermind outright eliminate them, we'd be in a very different place right now. More than anything else, uncharacteristic chokes really plagued and doomed us this year.
Believe it or not, even with the pre-tour drama surrounding me managing, even with our terrible start, even with some of the chokes, even with some historically really good players clearly underperforming this SPL, our team environment was actually really really good from start to finish. There are really a lot of positives and things that make me happy that I'll take away from this. I'm sincerely proud of my team for battling all the way back from a terrible 0-2-1 start to a position where we're in legitimate mathematical playoff contention in the final week. I'm proud of the half dozen guys on the team who were putting in 50+ test games every single week no matter what and were always a positive presence in the chat. I'm proud of the willingness of almost everybody to move to a different tier or do whatever we asked them to do if we thought it was best for the team. I'm proud that our team environment never soured or became toxic through all the nonsense. I definitely learned a few things from this experience that will absolutely help me grow and improve as a manager as a human being going forward. I'm sincerely appreciative for opportunity to have this experience and by and large I really liked and really enjoyed the guys on our squad. Thank you, sincerely, for taking this ride with me. I also want to specifically thank BKC, who had my back start to finish and fought for me to be able to manage this tour.
My biggest piece of (constructive) criticism for this tour going forward is as follows- In the same vein as the Ojama incident last year, I think way more still needs to be done regarding players only being willing to put in what would be considered a fair and reasonable level of effort if they land on a specific team. I thought with this being SPL- the big, ultra-prestigious tournament that everybody puts soooo much emphasis on and cares about soooo much- that this would more or less not be an issue save one or two unsavory personalities. It was a rude awakening for me that this was very much not the case. Pre auction, Lax told me "it would be a pretty terrible situation" if he were to end up on our team and he even messaged me on SmogTours mid-auction while I was bidding on him with some spam message and exclamation points making it clear he did not want me to continue bidding on him/he didn't want to play for me. FlamingVictini told me pre-auction "I'm not sure what my level of motivation will be" and "I certainly would not be any more motivated on the Tigers". I found out for the first time with the pre-tour drama that apparently EO really dislikes me and has a huge problem with me and he made himself completely unavailable to talk to (turning off Smogon DMs and Discord messages and making himself entirely unreachable) so attempting to patch things up or even have a conversation was impossible. And then, two players who I actually did purchase, Dice and Watashi, definitely fell into this camp as well. Watashi refused to test whatsoever, even a single game, said next to nothing in the chat, clearly half-assed it in the games and gave zero Fs and then started trying when we traded him to Ruiners. When I politely and calmly asked him how I can help him/where I can slot him moving forward, he responded as follows- "Is this your first time teaming with me?". Me "Yes". Him- "Well I don't put effort into any Pokemon tour so that's that". And in Dice's case he was outright MIA for two of his matches, getting us (what would have been) two activity losses while also outright refusing to test all tour long. Something tells me if he had landed on a team with ABR or someone he likes and values highly his behavior would have been noticeably different.
Although none of the players above explicitly said "I will not play for you" or "I refuse to play for you", they all managed to convey that message very clearly without being stupid enough to outright say those specific words. In at least a couple of these cases it should be crystal clear that the behavior of these players was in violation of the rules. Players who openly admit they don't care/aren't trying/won't try or who randomly don't show up for their matches because they don't care or who refuse to test or put in any effort at all should not be allowed to play in this tournament. It can, and does, ruin the tournament for an entire team. For the fairness and integrity of the tournament, more absolutely needs to be done to enforce the "any and all players are expected to put forward a certain level of effort for any team they get purchased by" portion of the rules. This behavior exists because we, as a community, allow it to. People do this because a blind eye is turned to it and they know there are no repercussions. If we truly value the fairness and integrity of this tour, and if the rules here actually mean anything, a pretty serious crackdown needs to take place here.
One more time, thank you sincerely to the vast majority of my team for making this as positive of an experience as it was ever going to be all things considered and thank you for the opportunity to be a manager in this tournament. Maybe just maybe I can get another shot, minus the pre-tour distractions and drama, next year?