When I first looked at the season line-up, and got my GM's opinions (kudos to Tautology, Khunkwai, Hanz - I'm blessed with some very brainy gamers in Garuda management), I figured that after a 9th place finish in our first season, that anything less than a playoff spot would have to be considered a failure.
Most likely I figured we'd finish either 7th or 8th, 6th if we were lucky. But, I also realized that ideally, for our long-term prosperity, we needed to secure a home playoff game for some extra loot for equipment at key positions and to invest in our stadium.
Initially I thought it nearly impossible. We scouted and weighed our performances against the teams we lost (sometimes badly) to last season, and it just seemed almost of of reach. If everything went right, we won all our "winnable" games even the longshots, and if a tough team had an unlucky upset as well, I calculated we might be able to steal 4th place. But that was a "best case" scenario.
The GM's and I laid out the season plan for the team, talked about upcoming hurdles and obstacles, the need to boost if possible, and if boosting when to do it.. And the players listened. They took it to heart, boosting players, developing players under guidance of our coordinators, taking part in our forum either joking around or inspiring each other.. It was total Gestalt. The group of agents and players became more than a sum of their parts, we became a team.
We lost our first game, but it didn't slow us down. We had circled that game (and a few others) as losses, because of the level differential and previous "ass-handing" we had received the season before. But we didn't lose bad... in fact, we had our chances to win. So our team wasn't demoralized in the least, contrary, we were pumped that we made a game of it, we figured our margin of defeat would be higher.
The "the Streak" began. It all happened so fast and wonderfully that it's hard to describe it objectively. The short of it is that we won 12 games in a row, 14 if you include two scheduled scrimmages against playoff teams from other leagues. We beat teams we had thought "tough but beatable" by large margins, and we also claimed victories against teams we had penciled in as losses, such as our wins against Padang Lightning & Mongolian Horde. We also 'lucked out' that other teams self destructed during the season, although some are rebuilding themselves into bigger and better versions of the old teams.
We also had some builds that performed pretty averagely last year blossom into producers. All of the players on my team are very solid, but some guys really shined. They know who they are, and don't want/need to be acknowledged here, but needless to say I'm very proud of how my team both as a group and as individuals performed.
If this was a Football 101 class, I'd have to give us an A... almost an A+, but without winning our playoff game, we just missed the extra mark.
