Alright Guys, back after a few days doing family/wedding stuff - Well at least I got something out of it, as I managed to persuade 'Er In Doors' to pay for a year's full membership for me off her Pay Pal account!
I hate to be the one to say it Nibs, and bear in mind that I'm in no position to gloat, and that I might be totally wrong, but I reckon you've been tucked up like a kipper if you paid £790K for that Strong batsman. I figured that the going rate for a Strong with nothing much else was anything from £300K to £500K, although I guess your guy at 18yo does have the potential to reach Qual or Rem batting.
But Even so, I do feel a bit better now, after nearly bankrupting myself on Friday, paying £265K to land this guy:
Doug Greening (334385)
RH Batsman, RF Bowler,
respectable
batting form,
feeble
bowling form,
sublime
A
steady
player with
feeble
leadership skills and
abysmal
experience.
Table with 2 columns and 6 rows
Plays For:
Cymru Gurgitaters
Nationality:
England
Age:
18 Years Old
Battrick Rating:
7,883
Wages:
£940 p/w
*
table end
Table with 4 columns and 4 rows
Stamina:
woeful
Wicket Keeping:
abysmal
Batting:
proficient
Concentration:
abysmal
Bowling:
abysmal
Consistency:
abysmal
Fielding:
Respectable
According to his previous manager, (providing he's telling the truth of course), he's been having two batting nets all season, and popped to Prof about five weeks ago. So I reckon he must be about half way up Prof, putting him anything between four and eight weeks behind Nibs' guy - Possibly a bit more, but not far enough behind to justify half a mill difference in their market value?!?
Like Nibs' guy, Greening needs urgent attention paying to his secondaries, and it was a serious gamble sinking this amount of money into a youngster with Abs Conc, when so little is known about the new training regime for young'uns' secondaries. But in my defence, I reckon, in my current circumstances, it's the only way I'm ever going to be able to afford a Qual batsman one day. Also his Resp fielding is a major boost to my bunch of pie-stuffers.
But as I say, I'm in no position to chuck financial rocks, from my current dwelling, in the glass-house of destitution out the back of the Battrick poorhouse. Oh yes, Battrick has just become even more realistic, as Greening's purchase means that for the first time my BT bank balance joins my RL bank Balance in being printed in nasty red ink. Though thankfully NatWest do me a better deal on my overdraft than the BT bankers - In Saturday's financial update I got stung £750, at 3.75%, for being £20K overdrawn for one day! - And that's with three Financial Advisers, who I thought were supposed to get me a better deal!
Haldane is at the root of all my financial doodoos, as I blew £265K on Greening, confident that I'd be able to offset the majority of that by selling Haldane once he popped to Resp Bat on Monday. But oh No! Haldane's gotten to quite like life in Wales, and once again failed to step up, after a world record fifteen weeks of nets for an 18yo! So now, with no home game this week, I'm forced into having to pawn my stock of Comps for relative peanuts, just to ensure that I don't slide into a dangerously irreversible circle of debt and interest. That's particularly annoying as, whilst they don't make it into my starting XI, I'd hoped that they may be useful to plug fitness gaps in FC, and if I'd have had time to sell them at my leisure I could have got much more for them.
But the ever-reliable Mullins did however pop to Resp bat, which will be a help as he moves to the top of the order. I've now pulled all three of his Bat, Bowl and Fielding nets, in order to make way for Greening, who I've set on a regime of two Bat, one fitness and one fielding. I've also doubled the hapless Haldane's nets, in the forlorn hope that he must, one day, pop to Resp and give me a much-overdue payday. When I am done with him I'm torn between giving the two spare nets to:
A. Patel, 19yo, Resp Bat, Abs Stam, Feeb Conc, £888 P/W
B. Mullins, 19yo, Resp+0Wks Bat, Med+6Wks RFM Bowl, Feeb Stam, Feeb Conc, Prof Cons.
C. Atherton-Ham, 19yo, Feeb Bat, Resp LHS Bowl, Abs Stam, Woe Conc, Feeb Cons, £762 P/W
D. Two fitness nets set aside as a dedicated Fat Camp to beat some of my lardies into some semblance of shape before the start of FC.
PRESS YOUR BUTTONS…NOW!
Oh, and at risk of being told off by Mark, one final gripe before I go. I know that Battrick is free, and that the people who run it are all-round good eggs, who help blind old ladies across the road, and never nick their kid's chocolate when their Mrs isn't looking - Like…Um…I've heard some fathers do! - But all this not withstanding, the GFI/TIE thing sucks! I've TIEd three games this season, knowing that there'll come a time when I'm going to have to give it some pasty to stay out of relegation trouble in my league - And each time I've TIEd, my fitness has gone up one level. But the first…The very frigging first time I GFI, my fitness comes crashing down from Fresh to Low - How's that fair? I wouldn't mind so much, except the ladies' fishy parts gave me exactly the same ratings as I'd had the week before on TIE anyway !And bearing in mind that I need to GFI my next two games as well, if they carry on like this they'll need to introduce a new level of Comatosed into the scale!
But seriously, does there ever actually come a point when you're so low on fitness that you do worse by GFIing than you would from PAN? The drop in fitness from Friday to Sunday already translated into an all-round reduction of a level or so in my match ratings, so I think I'm in real trouble. I have my final group match in the friendly Cup I play in on Sunday, and if I fail to make the knock-out stages I'm pulling out of the Plate competition to try and conserve at least a fart-full of fitness.
Oh, but Friday's game was awesome, even though I lost. Lancashire CCC 346/2, car-crash bowling figures, centuries for both their openers - Cymru Gurgitaters 323/5, Mullins 68(91), Dunfield 40 (41), Patel 60 (57), Carless 55 (52), Haldane 68*, (55). Sounds impressive but in truth I was never really up with the rate, still, it was nice making a mess of their Gun bowlers' stats:-) But need to win at least one of the next two against the sides immediately above me in 3rd and 4th, as there's a bit of a gap beginning to open up between me and safety.
Later, Trev.
