As I said in the Facebook post I’ll expand upon what I wrote there.
After watching our team – the Helvetic Guards – play in the European League of Football (ELF) this year I came away with a greater appreciation of the players and teams throughout the league. The ELF is certainly competitive and the level of play has continued to improve over the its three years of existence.
Now, we weren’t able to compete with the majority of the teams we played … but as an expansion team I think we got a lot of things done. Not enough – there was definitely progress.
Our 3-9 finish in the first year of our franchise was certainly not the result we hoped for. But, when you examine the season … it’s what we earned. Looking at the breadth of the schedule I guess you can say we might have been able to do a little better.
Had we played a little more consistently in the opener we might have been able to beat the Dragons in Barcelona in our opening game. A few weeks later we lost to the Milano Seamen in Italy after our import QB Collin Hill was lost for the season.
Without Collin the early part of our season quickly spun out of control.
Then again … I’m sure both the Dragons and Milan certainly are thinking the same way from the opposite side. They probably feel that they could have beaten us a second time in the back half of the schedule.
So reality is reality – we ended up 3-9.
There are certain teams that we just could not compete with due to the strength of rosters. For example, we don’t have anywhere near the talent that the Rhein Fire or the Tirol Raiders have on their team. These are not excuses – they are just facts.
Along with the Stuttgart Surge they just have access to better players and have fantastic foundations already in place. We are restricted in our player selection and we have absolutely no physical facilities to work with.
We have basically two practice fields – neither are full sized, neither have goal posts. Only one has lights (and we practice in the evening.
But, I will explain that as we go on in the next few posts.
Man-for-man (or will the PC police make me say person-for-person?) we can line up against Milano and Barcelona in our division and perhaps Paris, the Cologne Centurians, Prague, and the team in Hungary (Fehervar Enthroners) who play in the other two divisions.
Other than that – our team could not really compare talent man-for-man with the other teams.
Really, once we lost our import QB – Collin Hill – in game three and the inability of our front office to replace him quickly really hurt us. We had to jury rig our offense and we basically played four games without a competitive player under center.
Everyone knows you cannot win without a quarterback. Arguably Collin might have been the best thrower in the ELF. That injury was particularly frustrating because Collin was such a gifted player and so critical to our team.
To become a competitive team there has to be an emphasis on roster development and perhaps creating a scouting department. But, there has been no discussion about these critical areas to my knowledge.
But, again stories for a later time.