What's going on in Rünenberg
1

the Claim – Part II

By
Sir Schluurggi
– 20/06/2013

Last week we mentioned that many things have changed. This time we would love to tell they have changed again, but they didn’t.

Talking about the third trip to Zurich nobody really expected the Gold Rushers to win this game; many of us expected our guys getting killed by Murphys Law. But even though we could easily recognize the decrease of confidence in the team of Coach Dario Pfyl they still managed to get a close result (1-2) out of this fight. Cornelius Dahmer was again the man whose name appeared on the match screen. Nobody is happy when his team is losing and so the confidence in the team is gone and some of the fans too, while the remaining more loyal ones are in a calm mood hoping for better results soon.

After this more or less expected loss in Zurich, the team had to focus on the opening encounter in the HTUM Challenge Trophy, when they met with last editions group winner Klaukkala Bears. We were pretty sure this game could be won by the Gold Rushers, especially when we knew the aim was to reach the semis again, but the team failed. It was an up-and-down game: our team was down by one, up by one and after equalized again up by two, but finally lost with the score line of 4-5. This is a very bad start into this campaign and the qualification for the quarterfinals is nearly out of reach, since FC Rünenberg has to win both remaining games against AFC Wirschtlstand and Bellevue Barrage.

This team was then the next opponent in the first Golden League game of the Gold Rushers in season four, and it was meant to become the change we mentioned above. Coach Dario Pfyl changed the line-up to a more offensive 3-4-3, which the team didn’t practice since many weeks, therefore it was no surprise that our reservists were confused and had big troubles finding their partners. The consequence of the confusion was a doubled lead for the home team before the break, but our lads fought and came back with goals scored by Joël Taillefer and Simone Casano and added some extra minutes before Bellevue scored the winning goal after 102 minutes. The good thing is that the team hasn’t to wait very long to have a chance of payback, since the two teams meet in the Challenge Trophy upcoming Monday.

We know that our management prefers close results no matter if our team has the edge or not, but this was the fifth (close) defeat in a row, and this has to change soon, otherwise we’ll have to prepare for typing a post about the first relegation in the history. Well, there is plenty of time for changing the results but we think it should happen earlier than later. The next chance to produce a change is coming up on Saturday, when they meet Dead Rabbits at the Mill.

On Wednesday they will then play their second game to stake the claim and come back on the successful side, when they face MS Odense in Denmark for the third time in the Golden League. The two teams met in both the first and second season but unfortunately (because of the FCB forever Cup) they haven’t met in the third season. Both meetings ended with a win for the Gold Rushers (2-0 at the Mill and 3-1 at MS Park), but then we had Alfred Bruch on our side. We heard that Alfred wants to end his career now, but maybe he will wear his boots one more time to face his old team on the pitch. No matter if, Sir Schluurggi is looking forward to meet Alfred:

I remember December 20th, 2009 as if it was yesterday. We had just finished our first season and promoted to the eighth division. We had sixteen weeks to decide which players will stay in the squad and what kind of new signings we need. We needed a quick forward and I travelled to Zurich to take a close look at a young man called Alfred Burch, and I was deeply impressed by his velocity. He then was part of the team for nine seasons in which he played 142 games, scored 56 goals and was voted Man of the Match 7 times, before he got an offer from Hojris (Manager of MS Odense) which he couldn’t refuse. We had to let him go! Now nearly three seasons later (he played another 47 games, scored 20 goals more and was Man of the Match once again), he ends his bright career in Denmark. I’m happy we could arrange this game against MS Odense, not only because it is always an honor to meet them on the pitch, but also to have a talk to Alfred.

Regarding the game; it will for sure be an interesting and close clash, especially since they announced to become unpredictable! They have a small but strong squad and it will be a hard work to gain something there, but as I mentioned a week ago: we want to stake this claim and want to be challenged on our way through the mine! We have been challenged this week and we will be next week, but I’m sure this is what our lads are waiting for and we will be on the sunny side soon.

This is the beginning of a week of adjustment! First the Gold Rushers have to underline their ambitions to stay in the fifth division on Saturday, then they have to keep their small chances to qualify for the quarterfinals and finally they have to earn the first win in this Golden League season. RJs instead have to approve their actual run in the league and go for a win against the Piglets on Friday and keep the pressure high on Nurmiksen and FCB Juniors. Lots of action is promised, let’s hope for the right results coming out of it!

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4

the Claim – Part I

By
Sir Schluurggi
– 14/06/2013

Things have changed! No particular things but whatever you look at. The Gold Rushers are joining the Golden League again is only one of the things.

One week ago FC Rünenberg had a wonderful series to be proud about; the team was undefeated for eleven consecutive official games! The only loss during the past few weeks was the one in the semifinal of the last Challenge Trophy. Well this series ended last Saturday, when the Gold Rushers lost (1-2) at home against Borussia Assia at the Mill. This loss was followed by another one in the cup against Sedunis FC (0-2) at their site. The end of the second longest undefeated series in the history of the team was the most conspicuous thing that changed this week.

Since the management already made a clear statement about joining the Golden League Season IV after the Cup is ended, we started to check the table and found some more things which have changed compared to earlier editions of the Golden League. First we noticed an extraordinary increase regarding the number of participating teams in this early stage. Checking the tables of the earlier seasons we had to recognize that more teams participated within the first six weeks than in whole season one and close as much as in season two. But there are only a few (seven) known teams, that have competed within another season. The reason behind is quite obvious; the new teams are the second teams of the Members of the HTUM federation.

We heard that Sir Schluurggi stated the Gold Rushers would prefer to meet the first and main teams of the managers competing in the Golden League. Since we were not sure what the reason behind this announcement might be, we asked Sir Schluurggi if he has a problem with second teams or what else could be the background:

No. I have no problem with second teams at all. When the possibility of getting a second team managed was published and all the others started to talk about getting a second team, I started to think about it as well, but I decided to omit this chance because I want to give my whole concentration, impetus and power focused on the one and only Gold Rushers. It might be an interesting part of the game to manage another team in a foreign region and maybe doing things different as you did in your first team, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t do anything different, since I have my style and I can’t or even wouldn’t change it.

The reason for preferring first team challenges is to get more interesting and challenging matches. I don’t know if the others get me right, but we want to stake this claim and want to be challenged on our way through the mine. Therefore we’re really happy about meeting with Bellevue Barrage, another ‘fullfocused’ team of the fed, in the first encounter.

These words sound a kind of ‘lordly’, aren’t they? In fact BrinChaser, the manager of Bellevue Barrage, is one of the few managers that clearly stated to leave the second team as it is and keep the focus on the first, sorry, only team he’s managing! Bellevue joined the Golden League in season two and made it to the round of sixteen in season three, where they suffered a close 0-1 defeat by MS Odense.

Bellevue is actually playing in the fifth division in Oceania and they aren’t that bad these days, sitting on the third rank only two points behind the top spot. The most known names in the squad of the team are Grady Rapid, Bronx Turagabea and Kosta ‘Crush’ Filipović for different reasons; while Grady is the most valuable player, Bronx was the guy who was voted man of the match the most times in season three and Crush was the guy who collected the most cards (together with Simone Casano).

The two teams will meet for the third time and we’re quite sure Bellevue will do what they can to finally win the first encounter after two defeats earlier. First they met at the Armoury in September last year, a game that was won by the Gold Rushers with a clean sheet. This game was the second last game in season two one week before Rünenberg won the final against Los Mejores in Denmark. The second meeting of the two teams was held at the Mill in November last year. It was a 4-2 win of the home team.

Before the Gold Rushers will start their Golden League campaign, they have to travel once more to Zurich for this week’s League game against Murphys Law, a very strong site and favorite for the title in this season, and on Monday they’ll start the ninth edition of the HTUM Challenge Trophy against Klaukkala Bears. How could a manager find some time to lead another team with this tight schedule? And we didn’t even mention tonight’s game of RJs.

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4

Two years blogiversary!

By
Sir Schluurggi
– 08/06/2013

I never blogged before but I kept two websites running. But would it be the same to blog about a virtual football team? Let’s give it a try!

These were the thoughts running through my head when I decided to do what I wanted to do from the early days when I joined hattrick.org: to have a website about my team! In the meantime both websites I managed (a private one and a club website) back then are handed to their owners to keep them alive. It was a Wednesday evening, June 8th, 2011, when I finally started this adventure. In fact I did ones before on ht-arena.com but it wasn’t as close as comfortable as it is here. The first four months (and twenty-three posts) of the FC Rünenberg blog have been in German since this is the language I speak, but this changed some weeks after I joined the HTU Managers Federation on September 18th, 2011. Writing in English makes it a bit more work because I have to search the words that fit, and sometimes I really have no idea how to express what I would like to say in this foreign language, but I think you, dear readers, get what I want to say, otherwise I wouldn’t have got more than 760 comments on the 230 posts and 10 pages which have been brought to you during the past two years.

Joining the HTUM Fed was the best decision to raise fun out of hattrick.org at most, and it increased also the quality of design and content of my blog. These mates voted this blog for the best blog twice what I am very thankful and proud about, even though the award was actually based on their inputs in many ways. Not only the look but everything is somehow influenced by at least one member of the fed. I would like to express that now by telling you the backgrounds of the most read and probably most interesting stories on my blog so far.

Two friends met

This was the first post which was produced in corporation with another member of the federation. I was asked by Horus if I would like to answer some questions of a young lad, called ‘the Ace’, in the name of a character of my team. I have chosen Serge Noftziger to answer the questions but posed some back towards Horus. In the end we both published our part of the friendly meeting of the two young men in the park surrounding Sutter’s Mill at the same time. I felt very flattered when Horus, a class of its own author, was asking me for assistance. See the outcome of that partnership: click!

Close to reality

It was the second season in the sixth division and we played a great one so far, we still had the chance to take the top spot three match days before the end. We had to win all the three games to become champion and with those hot standings I decided to publish a press conference and had the idea to give it a touch of reality. I asked five members of the fed (Horus, Hojris, Leebebbs, Xuturo and Cuomos) to send me some questions they would like to be answered and I put all those in the right order to get an interesting conversation. Many thanks again mates, this was a very interesting project and it was big fun. Here’s what I finally brought to you: click!

Got a new look

For a long time I tried to do everything by my own, I designed the blog, the crest, the kits and everything else. I was happy with what I created with the simple tools I got then, but when I looked at the crests and kits others in the fed have, there had something to be done. There had to be more glance in it and therefore I asked for help and I got it from Lupachuk (Crest) and Paquebot (Kits). These guys made an outstanding job and if I need something new one day, they’ll be the first to ask for assistance. All I had to do then was to get the blog in a design suitable to the new black and blue look. This post was the presentation of the new theme: click!

Nine post series

It was the biggest story line on HTU so far! There have been more than a dozen different managers and blogs involved. It started with several provoking statements in the forums before the third season of the prestigious Golden League began and suddenly a war began on the blogs which should be ended by the fictitious Golden League council, but it wasn’t, and became more and more confusing instead. I tried to get all related stories posted by the different managers together and let Georg Casabella traveling around the world to find out what or who’s behind the ‘biggest scandal ever’. One season after it all began, things have been too quiet around it and I had to give the story an end, that’s why I let Georg travel again to find out where the newly elected council ended up. The last post of the part on my blog includes a booklet of the story with all nine chapters written by Georg Casabella: click!

There was a need

There was a time when FC Rünenberg and RJs suffered six or seven injured players at the same time and I assumed that this might be related to a new beautiful nurse at the medical center. I have never intended to go on with this story, but some of the readers asked me to tell them more about the nurse. I had to do something, and I introduced Angie; the breathtaking brunette with the alluring blue eyes, the sensual lips and the lovely face! I’m pretty sure I haven’t to write more about that but provide you with the link to get there directly (for more details follow the Angie tag): click!

Final tribute

It is the most read (more than fifty direct hits) single story I put online within these two years and it was the one including the first and only movie I produced so far. Inspired by the salute to a real life footballer, when he ended his career in Basel, I knew that I have to make something special to honor the most known player of my squad. I knew the date when he will do his last performance and I knew when he will enter the Hall of Fame, and because I have no idea how long it will take to create the movie like it is now, I started maybe two weeks before his last game. And then the making of the movie was much easier than I was afraid of and done within only two or three days! I nearly couldn’t await the publication of it; I was and am very proud about it. You may say this story isn’t effected by the members of the fed, but that’s not the whole truth, because it’s only possible to bring a virtual character to life in this fed, at least in that kind. If you read the story you’ll get that: click!

These are the stories I like to point out today, but there is other stuff on the blog, which was looked at many times. Some of you have them too, the pages linked in the top menu. I created ten pages which are regularly refreshed. They are usually rarely visited but during the two years they still had many hits, even more than each single story had. The most visited pages are those about the Juniors (including their history and the names of all talents ever became a professional in any team), the Management (telling you more about the staff of FC Rünenberg), the Squad (showing the faces and positions of the actual squad), our History (includes all tables and links to the played matches of previous seasons) and the one called Facts (a short overview of the club with some interesting numbers and records). Check them out, if you like; they are linked in the top menu and in the pages-widget on the right side! You may also check out the others not mentioned here.

What meant to be only a test is now running for two years and it is enormous fun to write real-looking stories in a virtual world! And the reason for it is to know there is someone who is reading and enjoying it from time to time! Many thanks to you, my friends, for keeping my blog alive for so long! Oh, and it’s not the same to blog about a virtual team as it is compared to a real life website, because here it’s all based on fantasy and creativeness completed with a pinch of reality.

Yours sincerely

Roger alias Sir Schluurggi

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