The next ten years

Now that I am close to having played this game for 20 years, here comes the second part of my Hattrick Story.

We ended the story where Qasigiannguit Forest were close to promotion to Div.II. Well, it failed and we ended second in Div.III and relegated the season after. Back to the well-known mediocrity. El-Barto was mafia, but fooled us all – again. Yes we had a few golden players in the youth academy. Ralph Algreen was spotted close to our anniversary – he ended with 20 U-20 matches (well, I was the manager… ) In fact the talent mass was so big, we decided to upgrade our strategy from 100% Danish to 100% HomeGrown.

Girlfriend upgraded to wife. Work situation still allowed for using time on Hattrick. All is good 😊

2013 – 2015 More teams – both club and national

The HTs have changed many things over the years, but to me the only really revolutionary change was that we were allowed to have more than one team. So in 2013 Urskoven (meaning The Jungle) was born. For some reason I can’t remember why I ended up having a second team in Angola. Maybe it was just a small country with a short way to the top? Anyways, now I could have the slow task of training youngsters from my own youth academy in one team, and use a more trading-based approach on another.

I was even giving the keys to even another team in the fall of 2013 as I was elected coach of Denmark U-20. It featured a Ralph Algreen, but actually not my Ralph Algreen – this was a time where there were twins in HT. A flying start with 5 wins for Denmark, but ended up fourth and failed to qualify. I was re-elected (with the campaignslogan: Ralph Algreen on U-20) but with another fourth spot, but on goal dfifference. The second to last game was against Germany, and this was the deciding game. I was sailing with a ferry in the Disco Bay area with no connectivity at the time of the match. So I was very keen on seeing Hattrick when we approached the harbor. But alas a 3-0 loss and hopes of qualifying was almost gone.

Actually, we were moving back to Denmark that day. This is what travelling in Greenland can be like: So from Qasigiannguit to Aasiaat on Ferry. Aasiaat was a bit foggy, so the plane was delayed. That caused us to miss our flight from Kangerlussuaq (the main airport of Greenland.) Air Greenland then flew us to Nuuk (the capital of Greenland, were we stayed a night at a Hotel which was a bit of a problem as we had our two cats with us. Next we were rebooked to a flight to Iceland and from there to Denmark. Until Air Greenland realized that we would not be allowed to bring the cats to Iceland. So back to the hotel for another night. Then transferred to Narsarsuaq (the other airport in Greenland capable of transatlantic flights.) and from there finally to Denmark, just in time for our daughter’s birthday. It is not always like this, but there is often some sort of delay. We learn to enjoy the trip as much as the destination 😊

Between 2013 and 2015 my main team mostly played in div.III. Not because I improved as manager, but mostly due to decline in number of users overall in Hattrick. Urskoven, the Angolan team promoted in their second season. By the end of 2015 Urskoven was ready to make a shot at the best League in Angola, the Girabola, and promotion was achieved early 2016.
At the end of 2014, I decided to try to run for the Angolan U-20. I got 3 votes and won on seniority 😊 Finished 7th in the group with only 8 points. But it got me re-elected (with 2 votes) and Angola U-20 did one place better as we finished 6th this time. In the middle of the election campaign for a third term, I had to resign form it as a new demanding RL job was taking my time from Hattrick.
Now living in the Danish town Ølgod, and not liking the sound of Ølgod Forest, the main team renamed to HomeGrown Forest and went down to div.IV to build the homegrown players.

2016-2019 Trophies!

Urskoven was promoted to Girabola in early 2016, relegated quickly, promoted again and then on the 8th of November 2016, almost on the exact date of my 14th year in Hattrick, we won a national competition as Urskoven was victorious in the Angolan Cup, Taça de Angola!
Now on to glory in the Hattrick Masters, or, well, we were knock-out in the first match.
In the Girabola, we had a third place, was relegated (again), promoted (again) and obtained silvermedals, before selling the team and starting over in late 2018. A restart that is peaking as I write this in summer 2022. Hattrick is truly a long-term game.

Yes, the sub-headline says throphies in plural. Because the main team HomeGrown Forest did also win a competition. After having played with only Homegrown players for some time and only being a div.IV-div-V team, I decided to buy a few players and we moved up in the divisions. Actually I could have had the Rocket Fuel-achievement if it existed as I went straight through div.III and also won the Ruby Challenger Cup in the beginning of 2019. After only one season in div.II – the peak of the team in all 20 years – I decided to accept mediocrity again with only HomeGrown players.

Over time, I have matured as a manager and Hattrick has also developed, so the need to get up in the middle of the night to buy the just right player is no longer there (with autobid being an option, but also that I now know that another player will come along…) You learn that you can just as well read the result on Monday, pulling a youth player on Sunday at 3 a.m. doesn’t get you better players, and the players won’t train better if you watch the training update live. Yes, once in awhile a mafia game on the forums does turn exciting enough that I feel the need to be online on deadlines to vote of the right opponent, but overall Hattrick turns from more of an obsession into a game you can play when you have a bit of time on your hands.

2020-2022 – More teams in the Corona-years!

For the new build in Urskoven, I decided on Longshot. For that purpose I opened a third team. This team bought some young talented defenders, trained them in scoring and defense. And the plan was to put them up for sale, close the club, and buy them with Urskoven. Not quite within the spirit of the rules, but possible and not illegal at the time.
At the same time, Urskoven gets young midfielders and train them in PM and scoring.

Come early 2020 and rumours and indications start that the HTs will make this move impossible. So even though my players are not yet trained as much as wanted, I execute. The defenders are put up for sale and the third team is closed. Urskoven buys 3 of them. Two-three days later, new rules are imposed, so it is no longer possible to close a team with players on TL. I have later sold two of the players and only kept one.
As I am writing this (June 2022), Urskoven have just won the Taça de Angola again, and is currently leading the Girabola. 3½ RL years or 11 HT seasons of slowly building and improving the team.

In may 2020 the farming team was replaced with a new team, Viðarlundin (meaning forest) on the Faroe Island. I had moved back to Greenland again, but Greenland is not part of HT (yet? please HT-Johan?) and Faroe was the closest thing to it (a Danish Colony in the North Atlantic)
I needed a fun concept for this team, and at that time Unpredictables were the shit. But then in June 2020 the HTs fixed a bug regarding Unpredictables own goals and also adjusted a little on the positive events. Well as with the TDFs I got stubborn and kept on my plan with 10 U-players. 7 own goals or mistakes leading to opponent goal last season …

The main team, now Narsaq Forest, was relegated to IV.34 and spend 6 seasons there, before I was persuaded to buy a player almost exactly 2 years after my latest purchase (which was a YP I sold earlier, but with potential to be future coach.) This was a young very talented goalkeeper (or unpredictable (!) defender with potential to become GK) who is part of an ambitious attempt on creating a strong Danish NT in a few years’ time. He partners with a very similar player from my own youth teams, something like 9 weeks of training between them, so I’m still mostly HomeGrown. After starting training these two youngster the team has been relegated to the bottom division – Div.VI - in Denmark, for the first time ever.

Not only did I start a club on the Faroese Islands, I also got my self elected national coach for the country. This time based on a clear platform of just using the players available – no scouting, no trying to convince owners to train this or that. Just setting the tactics Friday after Friday.
Actually the Faroese community has an even more ambitious project going for their NT with more than 100 players placed in teams with optimal training conditions, so I guess they will be a force to be reckoned with in the future. Built on several users who no longer play Hattrick to be competitive, but just want to train future stars. It is one of the great things about Hattrick, that there is room for this kind of commitment as well.

I had a team in HTI as well, but for just 3 seasons or so. Passed on the Apache league. That didn’t really catch me. But I entered the draw for an Anniversary League team the day before the draw. And got a team. Didn’t know what to do with it. I don’t like trading, so didn’t think I could ever be competitive enough. But then some users started a HomeGrown Anniversary League competition. So that team is also getting my interest now. Called Orpippassuit – the Greenlandic word for Forest.

The sub-headline says Corona-years, but actually we haven’t been affected that much here in Greenland as we are both somewhat isolated to the outside world, but also living in isolated cities and villages. So everyday life has been almost business as usual – just no travelling abroad and on a few occasions no travelling within Greenland.

2022-2032?

Why not? 😊 My young GKs are just 18 now, so there are some 9-10 seasons for them to be a NT-player. And in that time the main team will almost need no caretaking. Urskoven will play its peak in the next 3-4-5 seasons, hopefully with a few more trophies to show. The unpredictable team, Viðarlundin, should maybe start some focus on passing to avoid own goals, and the Anniversary league runs for another 7 seasons.

I have developed a Google sheets that aid me in running the teams. Including contribution of players, most worthwhile training, selecting which youth to focus on, budgeting for the new HAL-team, comparing players on TL, assessing opponents and so on.

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