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Old 03-06-2013, 06:15 PM   #19
archibalduk
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Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Garethw87 View Post
I've always wondered how do NIHL teams manage to sign import players! I'd imagine alot might be students again just looking for anywhere to play while they study? But as you say making it work on FHM might be interesting
I've always wondered this too. I don't think many of them are students. As I understand it (and my knowledge on the finances of this league is practically zero) most players pay to play and/or get expenses. In fact just last week my local team (Invicta Dynamos) released two players for not taking their commitments seriously enough, with the head coach blaming the low expenses allowance and players' work commitments:

Quote:
“We’ve had players not turn up for training, but there’s nothing we can do about it when players are ill, injured or have work commitments. They don’t get enough expenses, so you can understand it and I believe we’re not the only team struggling with it.”

[...]

“Unfortunately, Callum Best will also be going and that might be a shock to people. He told me last week that he couldn’t play because of a foot injury and then I found out he was away in Switzerland this weekend skiing.”

“That’s not good enough for me and I’ve also found out that he’s broken his collarbone, so I’m not very happy at the moment.”

[...]

“We can’t just have nine guys turning up for training. At the start of the season everyone signed a contract saying they were willing to play for the whole year.”
However the head coach of Solent & Gosport stated in an interview last October that the top NIHL-1 South teams have wage bills of £2,500 per month. For a full 52 week year that's £130,000 (although I'd expect players would only be paid during the 28 week or so regular season). My guess is that the money goes on just the top players of the team (and the weaker/junior players probably just get their expenses). Invicta is one of the teams understood as paying players wages. Considering it seems they're not paying the likes of Callum Best and Joe Bliss (two of their better players - the two who are referred to in the quote above), I wonder who does actually receive any form of salary.


Quote:
Originally Posted by archibalduk View Post
At the moment, the British teams and players don't seem to be performing all that realistically. My guess is that it is because the players are lacking any real ratings at this stage (E.g. Telford quite frequently finish towards the top and Guildford frequently finish towards the bottom). I know the EIHL and EPL aren't the only leagues to suffer from this in game.
Following the most recent beta, the situation is mildly better (Telford are no longer finishing towards the top of the table - but they're still too strong by some way). I wonder perhaps if a goalie bug which existed prior to the public beta was having any effect. Nonetheless, the EPL in particular is too unrealistic at the moment. I think maybe I've been too generous in rating the players in the weaker teams. Manchester seem to be grossly over-performing which seems a little odd because I remember when rating them that the Guildford and Basingstoke players were generally rated on a par with Manchester. It looks like Manchester starts and/or signs players the game creates (and these players seem very strong - one finished top scorer in season #1). The Manchester roster is very small in real life (only 8 forwards IIRC) so it seems the game fills the roster out at the beginning of the game.

I'm going to take a closer look and adjust things this weekend (including some parts of the EIHL).
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