Finals Fixtures cock-up

Hi guys. Sorry about my absence - whatever little spare time I've had has been going into www.behindthegoals.net (PLUG!)

Even though it is the pinnacle of the season there is not as much to blog about here anyway - there are less teams, you know all the players and you should be able to keep up with the big injury news.

But the game has been hit by some untimely and unfortunate drama, with the fixtures getting cocked up by the administrators. Instead of keeping every weekend as a separate gameweek throughout the finals (the logical thing to do, and fairest on managers) they pushed the Perth v Heart match into the second gameweek (which we're currently still in the middle of) and from memory, I think they also initially had the Mariners v Roar game from this coming weekend connected with the Preliminary final gameweek, which will be played the week after (this has been corrected now).

Whether they intentionally did that to have an even spread of matches across the finals (ie two each gameweek) or whether it was just an error, we will probably never know. I was not aware of this until right before what became the deadline for the current gameweek, which was the Perth v Heart match on the Sunday. Even if I had time to rush a blog post out, few would have been able to read it before it was too late.

I was tweeting with Murray Shaw from Fox Sports today (he has nothing to do with the game directly, so let's give him credit for being a willing messenger) and he confirmed the game admins were aware of the problem and were trying to fix it.

Of course, we know it's too late for that now. There is no way to fix the problem. Some managers (like me) set up their teams for the whole weekend, not knowing that only the first two matches would count, and others saw how the fixtures were listed and adjusted for it. So they can't simply shove the Perth game back into the 'Semi Final 1' gameweek, because a lot of managers purposely had no Perth or Heart players for it.

Many managers would have missed out on making their six transfers for the current 'Semi Final 2' gameweek because they wouldn't have realised there was a stupid Sunday deadline. They probably still have Sydney and Heart players in their squad, maybe as captain. Some lucky managers (such as myself) who were aware of the errant fixtures rushed in and made our transfers before Sunday night. I'm actually coming first overall so far this gameweek because I was quick enough to stack my team with Perth players and get Smeltz as captain. I don't feel good about it because this is a shitty way to overtake a lot of people.

The admins have three options, none of which are great. They can leave it as is, and just say too bad to those who didn't look closely at the listed fixtures and deadlines. They can wipe all points from last week's three matches and start a new gameweek for this weekend. Or they could declare the current gameweek closed, and offer a fresh gameweek for this weekend so people who missed Sunday's deadline can at least adjust their squads for the two upcoming matches.

Above and beyond that, it is a shame the game is so 'closed' from contact and interaction for its many loyal fans. The official Premier League game has opened itself up to the Fantasy Football Scout website to facilitate improvement, and help weed out errors. If we had a hotline (through Twitter, say) to the game's admins, we could have highlighted the fixture errors before it was too late. Throughout the season, we could also have cracked the whip on getting them to add new players as they joined the clubs, which was often not done until the players had played A-League games already. Maybe they can look at this for next season.

As for this one, it's a real disappointment that the race to the car has been irreversibly tarnished by this stuff up. After all those hours we put in throughout the season, the end results of the competition won't be quite right.