The story of Saint Hattrick's Day

It's a very schoene story, as we call it in German.
Perhaps some of you know this schoene things?
Things you didn't expect and you don't understand.
But in a special way - you like them.

(intro by StHTday-elbarteccero (10217664))

That's the way I felt on October 3rd, 2014. Not because of the German national holiday, but because of meeting schoene in the forums. We ended up in a messy radio show by Mera_Luna broadcasting our 4 dozens of duels.
A very nice day! And the matter was just our unlimited happiness because of having met with and in .. yes, you're right: Hattrick!

So one other day at the end of January, I felt like hugging the world again. The HT-world.
I was drifting along the archives of the German conference, met many old threads and managers ('old' is comparative - I am here since 2010) and just wanted to have an action for everybody to celebrate Hattrick. For everyone to state that Hattrick is perhaps dying, but not in another way than everyone of us: It's dying by living! As long as there are that many people happy with HT (and - in fact - supporting by paying for supporter or - like on Saint Hattrick's Day - duels), there will be no end.

Reading that, I think its too big words for what Saint Hattrick's Day was. But its how it could be seen.
The story behind Saint Hattrick's Day is just: I wanted to meet schoene147. So I opened a thread. That's all.

Big hugs, elbarte

---

Thanks elbarte for this very touching introduction. So, Saint Hattrick's day - a day to celebrate Hattrick with duels (single matches) and various Hattrick-related activity. How did you celebrate it?

Saint Hattrick's Day was going along with the Hamburg HT managers' Stammtisch [editor's note: local discussion threads on the German forum with regular local meetings].
It was planned like that, because I planned to have a little more RL-action than there was in the end.
As Saint Hattrick's Day was a Hattrick's Day, it was as nerdy and sexy as HT is: Unlimited!
About 8 guys between 20 and 50 and one girl (between 20 and 30) drank several beers while talking about ratings and forum stuff.
We tried to have as much duels in one HT-live as possible. And we listened to Hattrick-radio.
And we ended up in playing "singstar" and getting along the next day to visit Frankfurt. And the HT managers Stammtisch there.
Just the way you celebrate Saint Hattrick's Day everywhere in the world, I guess.

Bringing people together, having a nice time. That's Hattrick at its best. How does it succeed in doing so? What's so special in Hattrick?

I once described how I came here.
It is a long story (indeed the whole story before is long, my slow entrance lasted no less than a few hours), and it is a magical story.
That's the way I am feeling here since that day: A little magic.
everybody deserves their own football team
And thats what Hattrick offers:
You write the story of a whole club.
In transfers, tactics, training, in gains and purposes.
Press announcements are the cream to tell it, but the story is written by your decisions, whether they are right, wrong or any other kind of.

I am not the first to write it, but that doesn't make it less true:
The slowness of the game makes it that enjoyable.

Because you can have a break. The kind of break that you need. And you can set the complete level of time that you spend or brain cells that you use. You can have it your own way.

That sounds much less magic than it is for me. To have my own club. With his own story. And his own Kasbart Senefeld. Born the day I started. Playing since then. Since the day my life became brighter.

So true. Nothing to add, really. Thank you elbarte!

---

The hero of the day was without a trace of doubt Oppa-JoMar with his Ü-60-Senioren (978819), who played a total of 1.522 single matches, all at 22.15, against teams from all 128 HT countries. We just had to interview him, and we did.

Hello JoMar and welcome to Hattrick Press.
Hello Artod.

Let's cut straight to the middle. StHTday, you played 1.522 matches. Why?
I started challenging all the managers that I know from federations, tournaments and from several series in which I played. – After that I thought of having at least one team out of each of the 128 HT-countries in my arena. When reached that goal I still had free time. So I challenged as many teams in series VI (Germany) since that is the group I will play this season.

Once you pop, you can't stop - or something like that. Did you check all match reports of those 1.522 matches?
A friend of mine helped me with it. First analysis was:
- My team won 740 matches and lost 782;
- 9310 goals: 4796 : 4514 (in favor of my team);
- Highest victory 12:0; worst defeats: 1:10 / 0:9;
- Most goals: 10:11 (but who’s counting ^^).

With such a high number of matches, some extreme results were bound to happen, I'd say. How many teams did you challenge to play all those matches? How did you manage to challenge all those teams; did you have any technical difficulties?
I didn’t count the teams – but I estimate, it was slightly more than 3.800 teams that I challenged; not counting checking all teams which were blocked for challenges. – By the way – the interesting part is, very often leaders of a series had blocked this function – a lot more often than the other positions.
There were no “technical” difficulties – but at the beginning of my project parallel to the challenge I sent out a short e-mail to the international managers to explain the intention of my challenge (“StHT-Day”). Some managers felt disturbed and reported that to the GM’s as “spam-mail-abuse”. After being punished for my incentive, I stopped informing the challenged managers.

So much for kindness. Let's go back to the matches - it would be impossible to recap all of them, but which one of those matches was most remarkable?
I myself liked this match (5764434) very much; first of all since I have good connections with the other manager; secondly, it was an international match with very interesting game development, lots of goals and penalty-finish.

What does Hattrick mean to you?
My son introduced me to Hattrick two years ago – and it became a real hobby for me. Not only the game with all its probabilities in each match and different possibilities to create and build up your team or the various ways of defining your goals (success in your series; earn money; train for NT/U-20; collect flags; …) – but also the social factor - communication in federations, the forum or dealing with press releases.

Your son, heh? So let me ask the obvious question then: what is the meaning behind your team name?
Hehehe – “Ü-60 Senioren” (Over 60 Seniors) is not connected with the age of my players in the team but with a real existing group of over 60 years old friends. We meet once a week and still play soccer for 90 minutes; the oldest fellow turned 73 years old last week. And in some of my press releases you might find a slight hint to one or the other of my friends. ^^

Aha! So your bunch of friends is like the male counterpart to the famous Monty Python's Hell Grannies? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygy7UDADXDg) Just joking. You mentioned the social part of Hattrick, let's explore this further. What did StHTday give to you? How many new friends do you have, for example?
The most interesting part was the communication with other managers – especially in international frame – as an outcome of the challenges. It was exiting for me to “talk” to a manager from India or Argentina f.e. and have some information exchange around the world.

Tell us one funny anecdote regarding your Hattrick experience.
Oh – it’s not funny, but an awful story regarding the challenges:
Can you imagine, how a soccer field looks like if 18.275 people (my team with 11 players, 1.522 challenged teams 11 players each and 1.522 referees) share these 7.140 square meters (68 m x 105 m) so that each player has about 4 square centimeters to move ???
Here a picture of a scene in extra-time when the remaining players could at least move a little bit:
(http://www.imgbox.de/users/JoMar2012/Spielende.jpg)
But no worries – our greenskeeper is already taking care of it:
(http://www.imgbox.de/users/JoMar2012/Tag_danach.jpg)

On that day, your neighbor's grass was definitely greener than your own. JoMar, thanks for sharing your story with us and - good Hattrick to everybody!

---

Editors note: if you like the article feel free to click "Like"; you can also join forum discussion here:(16772383.1)

Link directly to this article (HT-ML, for the forum): [ArticleID=18741]