Once again, thank you very much to everyone who participated at all this year, this good result is all thanks to you. This was never about achieving a good result, but I'm still very happy we managed to do so.
The aim of this topic was to see if a bunch of good coaches could work together to get a semi competitive team. It was never about getting a top result - I never expected that. It was more about getting a better understanding of how people solve issues with a side, the various options you come up with, setting the side up to maximise the fixture etc. I found it extremely interesting and informative to be a part of, how often we would come up with a great solution I wouldn't have thought of myself. They may not have all worked, but we ended up with a pretty impressive result in the end through working it out together.
I'll be honest, this didn't go quite as I expected. I thought there may have been more buy in, and more arguing over the best options to go with on various decisions. I think the team may have ended up being a bit of a victim of its own success, people saw it was doing well and didn't want to participate to avoid dragging it down. That was not the intent - I never created the team aiming for a good result, it was all about getting people to participate. In that respect, I'm sort of happy with how it went, as there was a reasonable level of participation throughout, but also a bit disappointed, as I feel the results discouraged participation to an extent.
I hope everyone else found this enjoyable to either be a part of, or to read through. I get the feeling quite a few were reading along but not participating. That's OK, and I hope it helped you out. I understand most of our higher finishers either were participating or following along, so I'm hoping we helped play at least a small part in your success, by suggesting alternatives you may not have considered, which came from multiple people. Hopefully those who didn't join in will feel a bit more inclined to participate next time, every suggestion is welcomed, you'll notice I've "liked" basically every post here for that reason, as this was all about participating, not results.
Speaking of not being about results, I'll provide a quick recap anyway:
Apart from that one bad patch in Rd 10-11, that is quite impressive. Blowing out from 17th! to 142nd across those two rounds was not great, but we came home strong, and I'm proud of you for sticking with it.
I think I can pinpoint why we went badly across those two rounds, and it's on me. The Friday before Rd 10, a colleague picked up a coin off the ground and said that's meant to be lucky. I left it in the car that weekend. We went terribly. I threw it away the Tuesday after that round (we had a bad start to Rd 11 on the Monday too), and things almost immediately turned around. That "lucky" coin cost us, and I apologise.
Anyway, thank you again. I will likely start a similar topic for the AFL soon, which I seriously hope will be a bit less stressful. There were a few times just before lockouts this season which were not fun. I hope a few more people do participate this time, as that has and always will be the main aim - to get people to provide their input. It might not get used, it might, but it's definitely appreciated. At least you'll get a like out of it, and I meant every one of them this time around.
Will this be back for the next BBL season? Maybe, but I honestly think I'll give someone else a chance to run it if they are interested, and won't be running it myself. I'm actually more interested in having a go at using some of the learnings I got from this season for myself to see if it has helped at all. It's not that I didn't enjoy running this, I did, and it's why I will run something similar for the AFL.
Hope to see you all in the AFL topic soon.