Date: 3/11/2007 at 23.00
MatchID: 108130950
Arena: Rovito Monza Arena
Crowd: 12050
The weather was pretty good, and a crowd of 12050 had shown up at Rovito Monza Arena for the match. Coseza had chosen a strategic 4-4-2 formation. The following players took the field: Luster – Arsenault, Lamontagne, Silver, Sheard – Mark, Millard, Holloway, Godard – Barniville, Massegu.
A 3-5-2 alignment was the formation of choice for Powers. Starters: Bailén – Ivey, Loomis, Boesak – Connors, Harrington, Titus, Forrest, Swabey – Hess, Hebert.
In the 15th minute, the visiting Powers scored the 0 – 1 goal after Lisimba Boesak made a perfect free kick. Nic Connors came close to extending the visitors’ lead when he found himself completely unmarked in front of the goal and lifted a ball over Feeney Luster, but it was a little too high and hit the bar. Seemingly due to lack of experience, Merle Ivey needlessly tripped an opponent just outside the penalty area, but the free kick that followed didn’t succeed. In the 22nd minute, Powers’s Mark Hess burst through the central defence…
Now note that had you been watching this in real time, starting at 6PM (EST) on Sunday, you would have waited 15 whole minutes before you saw an update which told you that a goal had been scored. Another 7 minutes of waiting in real time before another goal would be scored. I should probably note that the thousands of other Canadians who watch these matches do not sit there in front of their screens and watch the text pop up after great pauses in between. Hopefully they are doing other things and just drop in from time to time during the game to see what happens, or long after the match is finished. There is, once the game has started, very little for the GM to do but sit back and wait. The outcome becomes dependent on a combination of your player’s skill, random Luck and ‘the Game Engine’ – the computer that runs the matches and spits the results. Often this ‘Game Engine’ is spoke of with a reverent awe… but mostly it is just cursed in the Hattrick conferences where users vent, cajole and tease.
Eventually your team becomes strong and you overtake the team in your series. You promote up to the next series and work your way up to the top of that series. Eventually with great patience and skill, you become the biggest, baddest team this side of the planet. Winning the Canadian Cup, the Masters, Private Cups between your friends – they’re all an endless series of achievable goals to announce to the world your skill in GM’ing. I don’t expect you to try. I certainly don’t expect you to succeed. My only dream, is here and now, you see a small glimpse of the wonderful word that could be open to you, if you only let it.
