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Honestly, I expected to be getting Laga-aia into the line up at some point this season, too, but like you say the competition is tough - particularly in the guard area. The challenge for us as a nation is skill sets that would force their way in easily 10 to 20 seasons ago, when we were winning things internationally, just don't measure up against the upper echelon of international sides these days. There are some genuine monster sides out there right now. On paper as a list of skills we might be the strongest line up ever, but as a comparison against our modern day counterparts we're probably not (obviously, or we'd be winning Asian Cups and playing off at the Worlds).
But I do think we're working on it and I do think we're closing the gap, which is a massive pat on the back to our community. WE absolutely punch above our weight range. Our rating is up to 17 at the moment, which isn't bad when you look at how many managers are active in Australia compared to some of the bigger nations. There are sides with more votes on their National manager than we have active managers that could possibly vote! That gives them a massive depth advantage, so against that we're doing ok.

I am more than happy to hear any musings, wonderings or brain farts people have about how we might take down Spain. Sometimes someone's left field idea can spark a new way of thinking about a problem. I won't promise to use every crazy idea directly, but I'll use them to inform my thinking.

That last NT match Venezuela had that went to overtime... If they had lost that game we would be seeing a favourable matchup against the 50th ranked side, the swedes. Instead we come up against a nation with 1100 users! Just bad luck!

Hey, I like a Spanish BBQ as much as the next man, I'm up for biting off more than I can chew this week and giving the old chompers a proper workout. If we DO get up it cracks this side of the draw open a little. Dare to dream, I say!

Well, our run in the Consolation Cup came to an end this morning with a crushing defeat to Spain. With inferior game shape going into the match we rolled the dice and tried a GDP, but got it wrong and paid the price, though the margin suggests we were probably a long shot of getting the win anyway.
We achieved the first of our goals in making the knock out stages, the goal is now to develop the squad a little further to be able to take those next steps in tournaments and challenge the sides around the top-10.

Giving MVP votes in this game was tough, because there weren't a lot of winners for us out there - our shooting in particular was quite poor given an inside play.
Grunter shot the best of the starting 5 and had the best of Points Differential of the starters, so I'm narrowly giving him the three ahead of McFlynn, who was the only one out there hitting the boards with any sort of urgency, while Matuska was the only player with a positive points diff and led our assists (with three!) from 16 minutes.

Thanks Woody, but given you'll likely have the home court now Hongkong just might get replaced by another scary young team! Looking forward to next season (if I get another crack at it) trying to take you on in the Asian Cup.

"Have confidence!"

*Blown out*

"No confidence!"

Yep, it ended up a bit like that. It would have been nice to go at least one more step, but I’d probably be saying the same thing if we’d been knocked out in the second round as well. You’re always a chance, just sometimes you’re a smaller chance.

The scouting process for season 53 has begun. A number of players have gone on and off the roster in the last few days and it is looking like there will have to be some tough choices made at the start of the season around who is in the initial squad.
We have a scrimmage against England coming up that will hopefully give a little more information about who fits where and with a bit of luck we can take them on again next week to try some other things.
If anyone has an Aussie player you'd like me to have a look at over these next two weeks feel free to drop their name here and I'll do what I can.

I also just want to say thanks to the Aussie community for giving me a crack at managing this side over these past two seasons. It's been challenging but fun and I'll definitely be nominating again, we'll just have to see how the election pans out. Regardless, even if I don't get put up for the gig again whoever comes in should have plenty of information at their disposal and a good, solid list to start with.

Our last game of Season 52 wrapped up tonight with a loss in a Scrimmage to Sweiz. It was an odd game in some respects but the key idea was again to try some slight variations and see how it panned out.

Overall we made some good progress in Season 52. Making the knock-out stages of the Consolation Cup was a good start, but ultimately the aim is to push for the World Cup in two seasons time and, if not, to go at least one round deeper if we do find ourselves back in the Consolation Cup in Season 54.

The MVP race was a tight one this season and in the end only 1 vote separated the top-3 players.

McFlynn: 1, 0, 3, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 2, 0, 0, 3, 2 = 16 votes
Grunter: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 3, 0, 1, 3, 0, 0, 2, 3 = 15 votes (huge charge at the end of the season)
Hongjing: 3, 1, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 1, 3, 0, 0, 2, 1, 0, 1 = 15 votes
Dawes: 0, 0, 1, 0, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 3, 3, 0, 0 = 13 votes (stiff due to lack of game time late)
Duffield: = 7 votes
Matuszkiewicz = 5 votes
Payne = 4 votes
Helo = 4 votes
Unzi = 3 votes
Omu = 2 votes
Davidson = 2 votes
Laga-aia = 2 votes
Gibbins = 1 vote
Sage = 1 vote

Congratulations to Whitewind, our legendary Under-21 manager, for training both McFlynn and Grunter - our top two players of season 52. Ultimately it came down to consistency, with their steady game shape a huge factor.
McFlynn was our leading scorer with 218 and rebounder for the season, earning yet another spot in the All-time top-10 list for rebounds.
One point behind McFlynn was Hongjing with 217 to go along with his huge season of 76 assists, the second highest of all time for Australia and the fourth season in a row where he has gone past 60.
These two have been core members of the unit for the last 5 seasons together but with both now into their 30s the time is now to continue to build around them before they start to drop away.