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Hattrick South Africa - through the eyes of a newb

Written by d_fender

The article was inspired by one question: “is what I do to grow the Hattrick SA community in vain or is there hope for growth”? This article is in no way intended to offend anyone but merely to describe how a newb (my personal opinion) interprets Hattrick SA as I see it currently.

Just for the record, I consider myself a newb because I have been absent from Hattrick periodically over the last 8 years (if not more). The article was inspired by one question: “is what I do to grow the Hattrick SA community in vain or is there hope for growth”? This article is in no way intended to offend anyone but merely to describe how a newb (my personal opinion) interprets Hattrick SA as I see it currently.

One thing I have learnt with the growth of the Hattrick SA community since my previous stint is that, the bigger the community grows the more patient a newb needs to be to achieve certain goals.

I remember clearly the first time I started playing Hattrick with some of my “friends” we were so small you would be in the PSL almost immediately. On my second stint of playing Hattrick I think I might have started in Div II.2 or II.3 (might even be 4), not sure though. However now on my third stint I am way down in IV.42 and it will take patience and hard work to get to where I was once before many years ago.
Anyway my idea those days was to assist in growing the SA community. I remember doing a mail to Mark Gillman of 5fm I might even have tried to Darren Scot (not sure how many of you might remember them) in an attempt to get him to mention Hattrick on the radio (tell you I was ambitious those days). I even think I contacted Highveld to see if they would talk about Hattrick. Anyway that was those days and since then much have changed the only thing that still did not change is me trying to advertise Hattrick in South Africa.
It all depends on how bored I am though but I have been trying to promote Hattrick through my blog and I try to post something about my team on the blog periodically. Although I am fairly new to blogging I am sure someday it might pay dividends and even if just one person signs up through my blog I have managed to achieve what I set out to do. But this brings me to the one question I asked myself: is what I do to grow the Hattrick SA community in vain or is there hope for growth”?

The reason I ask this, and I am saying this based on my own personal experience, is PATIENCE.
There are some other reasons but plainly put the biggest reason probably is patience. Basically this is what happens:

You train, set orders, play, win or lose over and over.

So what do you do? You try and post in your league’s forum but nothing happens because there are 5 robot teams (I have tried to speak to them but they are ignoring me) and the other 2 active users are probably not even from South Africa and can’t speak a word of English, Afrikaans, Zulu, etc. So say they are from South Africa they play for half a season and then move on because they get bored. In my league there is currently 3 active users of which one is new and I am confident he won’t last more than 2 seasons. But you have me and Soulblade FC and although I have tried to get some reaction out of Soulblade FC I have had no luck. What this boils down to is that my league is dead boring and as a newb this is not fun.
Now I turn my attentions to the South African forum and from my experience it is none more pleasurable there than in my own league. To be honest I would probably be better of speaking to myself.

No offence to the big boys

So why do I make this comment? I am going to use a forum I read recently (And I read many of the forums out there because of my boredom) as an example:

The form name is “mentors” so when you have some time, go and read it. A summary though of the forum is of a newb asking “Does SA have some sort of mentor program or any other system for helping new managers learn more than just the basics?”
Now the first response was an excellent response to this question and I commend the person who responded but from there on it turns into a bit of an “I want attention forum”. Now you would think that the forum would be locked by a moderator or the comments not relating to the forum to be deleted. Anyway maybe I am to old school but I lost interest in that forum after I read the 3rd and 4th reply which was pretty much about me myself and I and to see who comes up with the best come back to a post. So this forum lost its power and will dwindle into deep pit of Hattrick SA’s pit of useless forum topics.
Anyway to get back to my point I wonder if this newb is still playing Hattrick or did he have to revert to the international forums for help because SA players did not have much time for him?

But this is merely an example most of the other forum post relate to matches played and every now and then something interesting. There might be some forum posts out there that are actually useful to newbs but I doubt you can find them in the SA forum. Now this brings me back to my question: is what I do to grow the Hattrick SA community in vain or is there hope for growth”?

As newbs we lose interest because our peers out there show no interest and the robot teams are not much of a help either because they also ignore us. Hattrick SA than turns into “just another online game I tried and could not figure out”

Would Hattrick ever look at reducing the amount of robot teams? Would our peers guide us without it having to be about them always? And last but not least is trying to grow the Hattrick SA community just going to go bust for me again?

Just a thought, use it, lose it... makes no difference in my life