WXV Round 1

[meow meow]

Round 1, AFL Round 1

Team	Team	Venue	Head-to-Head
Buenos Aires Armadillos	London Royals	Neutral, Manuka Oval	3  v  3
Beijing Thunder	Toronto Wolves	Neutral, Sydney Cricket Ground	3  v  3
Cairo Sands	Cape Town Cobras	Neutral, GABBA, AAP Alliance, Africonia, Africa Cup	1  v  5
New York Revolution	PNL Reindeers	Neutral, Adelaide Oval	2  v  4
Dublin Destroyers	New Delhi Tigers	Neutral, Perth Stadium, EurAsia	6  v  1
Rio de Janeiro Jaguars	Tokyo Samurai	Neutral, TIO Traeger Park Oval	2  v  1
Berlin Brewers	Christchurch Saints	Neutral, York Park	1  v  2
Mexico City Suns	Moscow Spetsnaz	Neutral, Metricon Stadium	6  v  2
Seoul Magpies	Pacific Islanders	Neutral, Melbourne Cricket Ground	6  v  1

PARTIAL LOCKOUT

Thursday night at 7:25pm AEDST: Richmond v Carlton.

Just to re-iterate, this means that all Carlton and Richmond players you choose (or don't choose) to be in your team, will be 'locked in', meaning you cannot drop (or select initially un-chosen) players as soon as the first bounce occurs.

The rest of the round will be locked out at the commencement of Essendon v Adelaide on Friday night.



2018 fixes to be an enthralling season. I see as many as 9 teams who are capable of winning the whole thing this year. Each and every team has a chance of winning their round 1 encounter and getting themselves off to a good start. On the flipside there are no easy games so we should have a hotly contested round with some genuine blockbusters. Let's get into it!

Buenos Aires Armadillos vs London Royals
umm...



I don't know if you have played "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" and I don't know if you have played the extension "Dawnguard", and I don't know if you ever will. So there is a quest called "Touch the Sky" and this quest is by far the best thing I've experienced through any video game. But nevermind, why am I telling you this? There is a little village inside of a mountain inhabited by Farmers (degenerated snow elves). They live there in solitude, withdrawn from the world, alone in a cold and rough microcosm and pray to their mighty, ancient gods. When I first saw this while playing the game I was incredibly touched and quite sad, because I had to kill those poor little creatures.
Buenos will be put to death many a time in 2018 and are so withdrawn from the premiership race but we shan't be too pitying of these poor little creatures, for they will be THE dominant team of the competition in time. Look at their youth and don't pity them when you destroy them.
London on the other hand are deserving of all the pity in the world. A team that relies on the very occasional upset of superior teams to remind us that they exist in this competition. A team without direction it seems. Are they rebuilding? Burgoyne, Lester, Roughead as inclusions. Beastmode, Higgins, English and Sheed looks more like it. Not a threat to anything in this competition and don't look like being relevant for a long time. Should get one of their few wins this week. Maybe.

1. Will Buenos Aires get the rising star nomination this round?
2. How many nominations will Buenos get throughout the season?
3. Will the outcome of this match have massive repercussions? No.



Beijing Thunder vs Toronto Wolves
Battle of the soon to be superpowers?



Ah Beijing, the luckiest team in WXV. For years they have been able to get away with murder on the trade table and bring in guns like Zorko and Rocky for unders but now is the time for them to stand up in the competition if they are ever going to. They were lucky to not be done for tanking last year, only ever rising to their capabilities when their opponents played out of their skin, ensuring that they looked good but lost anyway to rise up the draft order. They must make finals in 2018 and should be aiming for top 4 with their impressive list.
London - take note of the Wolves. Now THAT is how you are meant to trade if you want to get anywhere. Except they got a little carried away and traded out the true GOAT. After the mighty impressive finish to 2017 the Wolves kept the momentum going in the off season and are truly capable of anything this year.

This is a finals quality match up and may in fact decide who gets into the top 4, or maybe even into the top 8 at the end of the season. I for one would love to see the Wolves get up and deny Beijing a spot in the finals by percentage only for I am sick and tired of seeing the cards fall their way in the luck department. Both teams have very minor injury concerns with the likes of Marcus Adams missing and Prestia and Taylor Walker under clouds but this should be an epic encounter.

1. Will Beijing have lady luck on their side this year?
2. Is Pendles going to bounce back to his best and catapult the Wolves up the ladder?
3. What ramifications will this match have at the other end of the season?


Cairo Sands vs Kate Upton Cobras



When you have guys like Taylor Adams and the amazing Dayne Beams in your team, your most important player should not be Dawson f'n Simpson! It's clear to see that the loss of one of the boys on the coaching panel has really hurt the organisation known as the Cairo Sands. And when you see shiz like this happening it's hard to blame him for dogging the boys. It's not like they didn't have time to rectify the situation either. Any and all success that Cairo have had in the past needs to be credited to GoLions, even the success they had before he was part of the crew. I sincerely hope that big Dawson gets up for round 1 to make this one a fair fight between former lovers. Both teams look like they're just making up the numbers but a win here could get the ball rolling and WXV is a funny place so who knows where things could go from there, but a loss to either team here is pretty much season over.

1. Will Dawson play?
2. Is Mitch Duncan really that good?
3. Does the Papsmear deserve to be on the same field as El Jefe?


New York Revolution vs Parisian Nice Lyon Reindeers



This doesn't look like a war between the USA and France. It looks like France vs France. The French are notorious for not wanting to get involved in any conflict, and their lack of military power is a good reason for this. The Revolution look like they have firepower circa 1775 compared to other years. A 92 average player at M1 is just horrendous for this team that has had so many stars on their list over the years but none seem to stick around for long. Their best XV is capable of an upset here and there but if (when) injury hits then they are going to struggle. A lot. NY sold their future when the current management took over, and they reaped not much success from the sale and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Luckily for New York they are up against a team that looks equally as feeble. PNL have performed well enough in the past but have never had an aura about them that made you think they were a real force to be reckoned with, and lately they have been heading south at a steady rate of decline. A handful of young stars is nice, but they can't get much better than they already are and there doesn't seem to be much else coming through that will push PNL up to where they once were. Honestly these two teams are just engaging in a season long exercise of determining the order in which they are to receive their draft pick. They'd be better off losing this match.

1. The ruck situation in this one is notable.
2. Will NY be able to find 15 players?
3. Will Will Brodie Brodie and Kennedy become guns to give PNL hope for the future?



Dublin Destroyers vs New Delhi Tigers
Battle of the two biggest SALARY CAP CHEATS



There was once a man named Holzman, and he was pretty good at Supercoach. He was an inaugural WXV coach who built the Dublin team. His roots were humble; finishing a pathetic 18th in the competition's first year. He was a fierce competitor who knew that wasn't good enough so he invested hours of his time crunching numbers, reading match reports, asking a few trusted sources for information, garnering all the knowledge that he could. His team improved quite quickly but deep down he knew that they were never going to be elite - so he resorted to dubious methods. He studied psychology to best persuade his rival coaches to happily hand over their star players. He studied law to debate any and all rules that didn't favour his own empire. He became obsessed with his own team and their reputation, and his ego ran wild as he sought to build Dublin into an unstoppable machine that ran roughshod over the entire competition forever. He became mentally unstable and actually believed his own ramblings - convincing himself that Dublin was actually better than the mightiest of mighty Sao Paulo Pumas.

Around the same period existed a dynamic duo of Elechet. Two extremely wise coaches who inherited a list that resembled dogshower. I'm not talking fresh dogshower either, I'm talking two day old dogshower that has turned white and dry. They did their best, and their best was damn good I might add. They received pity from the jury whenever trade period rolled around until they *magically* became one of the best teams around. They too learned a couple of things from the Holz, like how to cheat the salary cap and at one point their team was the best of the lot of them when it came to this. Holzman took note of the rising Tigers and started to listen to their incessant taunting of him and his team. Holzman struck them down. But they got up. They taunted some more. Holzman thought he had Destroyed them. But they got up. They taunted some more. Holzman wrote them off as a threat and the next time they met...

1. Holzman struck them down, again, and again, and again
2. They surprised him, crushed his reality and proved that his team was indeed Pie
3. They fought an epic battle that was merely a paragraph in their epic battle for the ages


Berlin Brewers vs Christchurch Saints
Vergangenheitsbewältigung - The German struggle to overcome the past



If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. But how many times do you have to fail before you come to the conclusion that it's futile? Should it never get to that point? Tom Cruise won the respect of the (not Tokyo) Samurai by getting his ass whooped over and over but never giving up. A man was fired as a newspaper editor; and according to his boss, he lacked imagination and his ideas are no good. He started a business that failed. Then he started another, and this mans name was Walt Disney. Inspirational stuff. He had the hunger to succeed. Berlin have the hunger. Desperate hunger. They should have a WXV premiership by now. They should have been in a Grand Final. Gawn and Fyfe should be dominant. Franklin. Kennedy. Goddard. Jones. These guys won't be around forever so now is the time for Berlin to either become Walt Disney, or just that other Austrian guy with the stupid moustache that was a failed artist and failed in war a few times.
Standing in their way is a team who will let their performance do the talking.

1. Will Fyfe or Gawn be the better captain option, and will P77 choose the correct one?
2. Will the loss of Viney dishearten the dictator and have a flow on effect on the rest of the team?
3. Will GAJ or Grape get the 3 votes in the Stynes award for this round?


Rio de Janeiro Jaguars    vs Tokyo Samurai



Jaguars? More like kittens at this point in time. This club won a premiership not too long ago and now look at them. Their coach is more interested in emoji and gif making, and being the undisputed best poster on FF instead of incredibly good management of his team like the good not that old days. Massive overhaul of his list but has it been for the better? Last time the WXV community questioned his moves he declared that we should all get flowered then proceeded to win the flag. One forward who averaged over 70 is laughable and I am going to enjoy reading Levi's non-WXV related posts throughout the year, or perhaps he'll get to work on the awards early because there's really no need for him to pay attention to the atrocities that will be committed upon and by his team.
Good old Tokyo. Possibly the most irrelevant team in WXV history. Boomz seems to live in the jungle with no access to electricity so managing a WXV team can't be easy but he made some handy moves in the trade period that should see the Samurai climb up the ladder eventually. The loss of Williams is a brutal blow that has only been compounded by the loss of Gleeson for half the season, and the backline is one of the weakest lines possessed by any XV across the comp. Going to be a tough year but they might Jag a win or two here and there.

1. Will Whitfield to half back result in him being ELITE?
2. Why is having a playing ruckman so passé?
3. What innovation do you want to see in the awards which is honestly WXV's night of nights?


Mexico City Suns vs Moscow Spetsnaz



On a very famous race track there use to stand a majestic oak tree on the most treacherous of turns. It was not only a magnificent sight to behold but it also served a purpose for the competitors. It was positioned perfectly as a marker of when to brake, and if the drivers could master the corner they knew they were doing well. Sadly the tree was eventually cut down and it was a great loss. Our majestic tree of WXV has been cut down. The Sun has set. The measuring stick is gone. Mexico City made the most of their time in the sun but football is a winter sport and the sun won't be seen for a long time now. Can JROO coach? Sure, he has a premiership but that's like Chris Scott inheriting the Geelong side in 2011 when they could win on autopilot thanks to the work of the previous regime. Let's see what he's made of.
No Docherty, no Moscow? Maybe not. It's a MASSIVE loss no doubt but there's more to this team than their superstar defender. Treloar has returned to his rightful home and along with Heppell, Coniglio and their TWO premium ruckmen there is still a lot of talent to work with. Docherty hasn't given up on returning in 2018 and if Moscow can hang in there for the season and find themselves in the 8 at the other end of the year then who knows? They will sweep Mexico aside this week and probably be on top of the ladder at the conclusion of the round. Will the 2018 season be a reflection of the clubs hisory where they just slide down the ladder as they did year by year after taking over from yours truly or can they hang in there and do something special?

1. How many coaches will sook about their rucks every week while Moscow flaunt theirs?
2. Will Sicily prove that he and Rocky > Gibbs and Sandi?
3. Will Mexico City get a priority pick?


Seoul Magpies vs Pacific Islanders



The main event. The one we're all interested in. Purple 77's MATCH OF THE ROUND!
All eyes on Seoul to see how they recover from last years decider. They look to have lost nothing over the off season and have added a couple of lower end XV players so they should be around the mark again in 2018. But how will losing the grand final affect this bunch? Permacaptain looks more interested in playing head games leading into round 1 rather than hungry focus of a guy like lets say Marcus Bontempelli. The rot may be setting in. Dublin may have knocked them silly. I wouldn't be writing off this team though. Kelly, Oliver, Marchbank, TJ, Curnow, Swallow, Shiels, I Smith, Haynes and Salem could all improve on their 2017 output and turn this team into the dominant force of 2018.
Their counterparts for this encounter have a hefty reputation that seems to have grown over the last 12 months but not only because they have gotten better, but also because the Mexico's and Rio's have departed from the top of the table. They think they can sit on their hands and send out ludicrous trade offers in preseason and that natural improvement will see them surge further and further up the ladder but how much better can the likes of Bont, Titch, Witts, Laird and Hurley get? They need some growth from the likes of Devon, Stanley and Guthrie to make the leap into the top tier and quite frankly I don't see it happening. I would like to see the Magpies drop a wet, runny drop of shower on the Islanders in this one. Maybe they'll realise that trading Bont to Christchurch is the only way that they're ever going to get anywhere.

[iZander]

thats an awesome write up meow!

[meow meow]

Memory lane time. Some of you wouldn't remember it as well as others who were involved at the time but everyonefeels the repercussions to this very day. WXV would be a very different place if most of these guys were where they started. Original WXV Draft + First International, PSD and rookie drafts. Beijing wouldn't have been duped into swapping Brian Lake for Adam Treloar, while Dublin's #1 pick Mummy wouldn't be around and their #2 Dale Thomas would be spudding for them. Boomz would be making the top 4, while pothead's Wellington and London would be big contendes while CrowsFan and myself would be dominating. I've left out the Nathan Browns and players of his ilk who'll never be noteworthy but he's what we'd be dealing with.

Players of any noteworthiness at all...

UNDRAFTED
Johannisen
Blicavs

BEIJING
Yeo, Tarrant, Taylor
Dangerfield, Treloar, Tyson, Grigg
-
Betts, Deledio, Hooker

BERLIN
Hibberd, Howe, Tmac, Henderson
Brouch, Ross, Griffen
-
Buddy, Walters, Wells

BEUNOS AIRES
-
Lyons
Vardy
Jenkins, Robinson, Jong

CAIRO
Hanley, McVeigh, Tomlinson
Redden, Armitage
Goldstein
JJK, Boak, Puopolo

CAPE TOWN
Haynes, Pittard, Wood
Jelwood, S. Hill, Curnow
Gawn, Z. Smith
Watts, J. Cameron, Hawkins

DUBLIN
Burgoyne, Atley, Thompson,
Neale, JOM, B. Hill, Barlow
-
Mundy, Daisy, Bruce, Caddy, Day

LONDON
Docherty, Laird, Hurley, Reid, Broadbent
JPK, Cotchin, Douglas, Mackay
Bellchambers
Breust, Garlett

MEXICO CITY
Hodge, Gilbert, Talia
Ward, Goddard, Ebert
Sandilands, Longer
Waite, LeCras

MOSCOW
May, Shaw, Wilson, B. Smith
Dusty, Beams, Higgins, Liberatore, WHE, Bastinac, Kerridge, Seedsman
Naitanui, Witts, Roughead, Ceglar
Lynch GC, Bennell, Christensen, Matera

NDT
Mullett, Buntine, Geary, Trengove
Zorko, Rockliff, Polec, Langford, Murdoch
-
-

NEW YORK
Savage, Birchall, Hombsch
Fyfe, Heppell, Gaff, Cunnington, Melksham
Stef, Lycett, McKernan,
Greene, Darling, Menzel, Fasolo

PACIFIC
Frawley, L. Brown
T. Mitchell, Newnes, Swallow, Prestia, Gibson, CEY, Miles
Nichols
Townsend, Elliott

PNL
Simpson, Rich, Jones, Grundy, Williams, Jonas
Shiel, Jones
-
Dahlhaus, Wingard, TJ Lynch, Cyril

SAO PAULO
Roberton, Tuohy, Houli, Vince, Heartless, Webster, R Thompson
GAJ, Duncan, Zaharakis, Hannebery, Wallis
Jacobs, Daw
Roughead, Devon, Motlop, Wright

SEOUL
-
Gibbs, Sidebottom, Coniglio, Steven, Scully
Kreuzer, McEvoy, Stanley, Simpson
Dixon

TOKYO
Harbrow, Suckling, Davis
Parker, Shuey, Shiels, SSelwood, Stevens, Jetta
Leuenberger, Tippett
Gunston, Jack, Patton

TORONTO
MacMillian, M Johnson
Pendlebury, Adams, Hall, Ziebell
Ryder, Hickey, Pedo
Gray, JRoo

WELLINGTON
Rance, McGovern, Ellis, Crisp
Murphy, I Smith
-
Menegola, Walker, Lester, Picken, Colyer

[Nige]

Yeah look, I'm super flattered and excited to be playing Cape Town in the opening, but I'm a lot more interested in Danger and friends vs Jed Lamb and friends.

[RaisyDaisy]

Someone else writing us off, nothing we're not used to

Will just have to keep proving people wrong. Got a pretty good record of doing that ;)

[GoLions]

Someone else writing us off, nothing we're not used to

Will just have to keep proving people wrong. Got a pretty good record of doing that ;)

Do you though?

[RaisyDaisy]

Someone else writing us off, nothing we're not used to

Will just have to keep proving people wrong. Got a pretty good record of doing that ;)

Do you though?

Yes. Yes we do

We've been written off plenty of times and got up for the W.

[JBs-Hawks]

Someone else writing us off, nothing we're not used to

Will just have to keep proving people wrong. Got a pretty good record of doing that ;)

Do you though?

Yes. Yes we do

We've been written off plenty of times and got up for the W.

Nah pie got the W

[Ricochet]

Good luck to Holz and Dublin. May the best team win

[Holz]

Good luck to Holz and Dublin. May the best team win

Like wise NDT, not to worried about this one win lose or draw.

Got to say though really disapointed we are playing round 1. Would have been much better to build up to it.

So back to back years suck.

[Ricochet]

Naaaaaawt. You're Pie and we'll flog you

I'm thinking 10+ goals

[Holz]

Naaaaaawt. You're Pie and we'll flog you

I'm thinking 10+ goals

Im still sticking with the good luck NDT.

I am most interested to see how the crows implement Gibbs and how the North ruck combo goes down.

I hope to see you in the finals for a real match up.

[Levi434]

Rio R1 Team:
D: I. Cumming
M:
R:
F:
I:

Serious though, is there a bigger lock than one Isaac Cumming in all formats?

[iZander]

Rio R1 Team:
D: I. Cumming
M:
R:
F:
I:

Serious though, is there a bigger lock than one Isaac Cumming in all formats?

yeah.....Finlayson ;)

[meow meow]

Two months to go lads and ladettes.