While Pekin will be rebuilding I expect Roger's team will beat me twice this season.  

After another chastening 0-3 session, I thought it worth reflecting on how the season is going so far.

On the plus side, our Freshmen are coaching up nicely, we're up to heady heights of 27th on the T7 rankings and we've already bettered our benchmark Season 2's 2-30 record.

On the downside, no recruitment so far and it's hard to see where another win is coming from.

I took a look at last season's T7 to try and understand why we're so far off the pace this year.  It's an interesting comparison.  I have a better L, S and RS than previously and the two OHs are rated about the same.  But All Star Wesley Prater's graduation last year has left a huge role in the MBs - his replacement is around 35 points worse. I knew he was carrying last year's team but had no idea quite how significant his contribution was.  Sadly, I didn't prioritise MBs in last year's recruitment, so it'll be at least four seasons before we see anyone approaching Prater's quality in the Pod.

sounds a good plan to me

The report card on this season's three aims doesn't make for bad reading:

1. Coach up our three freshman - A+, all three have been maxed out, as was our 3* walk on and every other player we wanted to coach, plus a couple of additional levels for players that we weren't expecting to go anywhere near

2. Recruit 3 new 5* players - B, a partial success with only two recruits but at least they're both 5* and in the Libero and MB positions where I'm weakest. Hopefully we'll get better rolls from Olmec than last year

3. Better Season 2's 2-30 record - A+, an 11-20 record was beyond my wildest dreams, especially as we seem to have played more Q1 opponents than any other team this season. Can I have Denali's schedule next season please 😉

Overall, it's been great fun but I have to say I'm really glad this season is over and look forward to a far more competitive Season 8.

Reading Eduard's post reminded me that sometime in the past I'd written something about how terrible Pekin were.  Can't say my improvement plan was very sophisticated but it does seems to have been effective.

I was reading your first post on this team news and see ranked 30th and 31st and had a little error. Wuh? After that I noticed the date and everything makes sense.