Asunto: National Team U21

Yep, the actual real time differential of 10 hours between Oz Eastern seaboard & UK only take effect for about a month each year.....then it's an hour swing either way. 20 years or so & my parents still struggle to get it....bless them!! :D

Going to be quite a rough match today, missing out number 1 GK, #1 ATT, and with a number of key players out of form.

But all we need to do is aim for 2nd in the group to make it through to the next stage

Looking like Wales & Ukraine will be the competition for 2nd place.

Going in against Hong Kong today.

Normally this would be an easy win, but we are actually missing both of our strikers (which are a long way ahead of the rest) as well as one of our A-Team defenders.

We should be ok, but lets see how these reserve strikers go

Well the reserve strikers did a great job to help out cause, putting 9 goals past Hong Kong. Only time will tell if it was enough but it was a great effort for sure.

It will be important to get 4-6 points over the next two rounds, and of course the most important match against Ukraine is a home match on a day when I have a long exam on.

Anyway, one step at a time. China did us a great favor and beat Ukraine, so now it is up to us to continue to hold our points to qualify to another World Cup

Nice win today against Cymru. Leijer had his debut match, we had our full team available (just didn't play some due to form) and the strikers had a great time. Myers (MID) even felt he wanted to have a crack at the scoring.
Collina proved form had nothing to do with scoring bagging 4/8, whilst Mitchell got 2/8 and 3 assists.
Finally the defense didn't let us down, allowing only one shot, which actually hit the post, keeping Plesa completely out of the game, just sitting there with nothing to do except fiddle with his diddle.

Next weeks match is the big one against Ukraina. We have a 5pt lead on them, which puts us well ahead of the ball game, but they are a strong team, and two wins for them certainly isn't out of the question, especially if Brasil decide to go easy on them in the final round. It also happens to line up with an exam I have, making it difficult to put anything really in place

We got the all important win over Ukraina today, proving we really should have been the number 2 seed in this group.

It was however a very close game. They had the positional advantage over us tactically, and hacked down two of our players, but we still managed to get there with a beautiful goal from Mitchell, and a clutch save from Ponting near the end.

This doesn't get us over the line for the World Cup Group stage, but it does give us a huge advantage with Zhongou being our biggest threat to Qualification, which if they got it, huge congrats to them.

24 days *cries*. Good you got the win though as it puts us into a great position to qualify again

This week we have a friendly and we will be playing with our B-team.

I like doing these matches as it is a reward for all those fringe players that people have put time in to training. It will be a mix of 21yos who otherwise haven't had much game time, and players who are now going to get a game a little earlier than expected.

I am also open to requests if there is anyone someone would like to see on the field

As stated previously, tonight's match is a B-Team.

It consists of players who would not make our A-team if we played today. Sometimes it is as little as a level or two of form that is the difference.

I like doing these games as it rewards those who have trained fringe players. It also opens our eyes to some of the future stars that haven't already made the A-team.

Of the 14 who I am expecting to be on the pitch at some stage, 7 are playing their debuts. Besides Plesa (12 caps), the other 13 players have a total of 13 caps between them, so it's a very inexperienced side out there for sure.

Hope you all enjoy, and we will be back to our usual proceedings next week

Unfortunately we copped a loss this week with our Defenders acting like midfielders and defenders dropping back by themselves for no reason (was not like that in the tactic) regularly putting their strikers onside with noone else to help defend.

Sometimes the ME does some weird things that make absolutely no sense and you just have to cop it. Luckily we already got the points against Ukraine that we needed last time so it shouldn't be the cause for us to miss out on the next stage of the world cup, we just need to make sure we beat Zhonggou
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Very annoying it made Love MID order. I saw that when I was setting the line up and I changed it to DEF thinking it was weird, yet somehow it went back to MID again.
I'm assuming this is a bug but can't rule out user error unfortunately.

Should have done enough to qualify for a 2nd World Cup in a row. Nicely done

So ends another season and we say good bye to a lot of talent in the mob.

For the second time in a row, we have qualified for the Group Stage of the World Cup Finals, despite not being in the 2nd pot of teams during the qualification period.

We managed to knock out Ukraine from that position within our group and had strong competition for a while there from Zhonnghou, who really punched much higher than their ranking would suggest.

I would like to thank everyone who has been training for Australia and would welcome any new managers to ask questions on training and also train for Australia. Together we have grown Australia's rank from as low as the 70s in to the mid 30's.

Our biggest limitation is probably less to do with number of trainers, but number of youth schools.

I will post more later on the upcoming season and team we have, but for now, let's celebrate the core of the squad that helped us achieve this. There will be a couple of names missing, but these players formed the majority of the matches we played.

GK
Joel Ponting - cometer
Dheran Plesa - JoKeR

DEF
Tommy Houston - JanJ
Noel Wilkin - tabby
Steven Brain - tabby
John Brown (20) - achmid
Dylan Thomson (20) - panxxxo
Paolo Love - oscar /Marco_16


MID
Damien Myers - ufhcs/Vampyr
Ray Burton - agbell
Christian Renaud - cometer
Marshall Schofield (20) - achmid
Steward Patterson - Ukes
Ace Scuderi (20) - cometer

ATT
Jason Mitchell - dokidok
Brodie Collina - Jota erre
Denis Oliveira - fantum
Ante Goulding (20) - gulzzy

All-rounder
Heath Chapman (20) - agbell

All those highlighted in green are trained by Aussies
Vampyr got a BOLD because he is basically an Aussie :) and we are happy he is with us

Shoutout to the following players who played 10+ matches for the NT:
- Dheran Plesa, Paolo Love, Tommy Houston, Noel Wilkin, Steven Brain, John Brown, Damien Myers, Ray Burton.

SPECIAL SHOUTOUT to the following players who played 20+ matches for the NT
Brodie Collina, Jason Mitchell, Christian Renaud
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Season Data is in again - I thought last season was a big drop in average value and total value, well this season has gone to a whole new level of drop. I'm hoping this is because we have very few goak keepers in this squad, and no beast ones. Last season our drop in value didn't result in a huge drop in rating which was good, but we will see how this season goes.
If anyone pulls a 19yo or younger decent keeper, it will definitely be worth training up. We have Munn (19) and Shaw (20) who are looking good, with a couple of others who I'm not sure if they are being trained Burton (21) and Thomson (19), although at best, both of these would only be reserves for poor form or injuries to our top keeper. I have no listed 16/17/18yo keepers.

On the positive, our rating points and rank continues to go up, and if we can have a good Asian Cup run at the end of the season, we may be able to hold on to our 2nd Pot position.

So our U21 team would be reasonably competitive if it were a club team in A League looking at ratings. Can't believe Renaud has turned 22. Where have the seasons gone :O.

Nice job as always and tough luck on drawing France as a 3rd pot team for the WC given they rank #7.