Asunto: [u21]cometer

Will you be using the U21 NT as a tool for growing and encouraging the Australian SK community, or are results and JWC qualification the top priority?

A bit of column A and a bit of column B. I'm hoping of prioritising both. I believe both are just as important.

If I don't encourage and try to grow the interest in the community, then future U21 players and our own leagues become weaker and less chance of obtaining success. At the same time users leave and we may end up where we don't have any NTs of any note. Similarly, why go through the endless hours of time required if the community just ignores it?

If we don't try to achieve results, then we miss out on the rewards that brings as well. The extra satisfaction that comes as a result of having a community with fewer users achieving these big landmarks which may spark more eagerness to continue to sustain a competitive side. At the same time if results fail to occur, interest of the NT's is lost and more people spend time with their own teams and we end up with the former situation.

How best to balance this is the key. How I intend to go about it well that's what I need to think about. I'll obviously start small and build up through communication in forums, maybe some form of competition to involve users but this could expand into other directions too, such as providing advice on the game, having others involved with offering suggestions/opinions as a sort of mentoring role.

I won't be personally hopping around trying to grab users but if we can maintain the set we have and build upon others knowledge to make it easier and give us a more competitive league then I'd be ecstatic.

All in due time but start small and build up.

who are our key players for the present and future and how do you assess our chances for the world cup? (make cometer write a long post time!)

Everyone at this stage. As for players in particular I'll need to look at the database as I haven't actually seen too much of that in recent times, particularly not with U21's. I'll take a look soon and get back to this one as it looks like I'm going to have to check out a few years supply at once :).

Going around again, unless others want a shot. More than happy to take a back seat if an Australian user is really keen or a quality manager comes along who I feel is worthy to take the team. Otherwise, I'm up for re-election and we'll see how we go. WCQ this season which should make things a little more interesting but our U21 side just isn't strong enough anymore to expect to be able to do anything exciting. For a long time we've punched above our weight but it's difficult to maintain that when you lose your active managers as we have over the last few seasons in particular.