Calling a Mulligan

Hello friends, and thank you for reading. Firstly, I owe you all an apology for my childish melodrama. I’ve done a bit of soul searching the past few days, and as I look back, I can’t help but blush. I can assure you that nonsense is behind us now.

Secondly, let’s all pretend the last month didn’t happen, shall we? I never left Afan Lido, I never joined FC United, I never restarted with Salisbury. You see, I broke a promise I’d made, and I just can’t quite live with that. I promised you all a Welsh challenge, and by golly that’s what you’re going to get!

So rewinding, I’ve managed to salvage a backup save of the original Wales save, courtesy of Dropbox and their stellar file restoration system (seriously, it’s amazing). As you would expect, we have lost a bit of time, a full year in fact. We’re going back in time to September 27th, 2012 on the eve of a huge rivalry match with Port Talbot town. We’re sitting in first place with five games played:

As a reminder (for myself included), our starting squad looks like this:

You’ll see some stalwart names in there, including the likes of Marlon, Gilvan, and Javlon Campbell. This is before the «Great Firesale of 2013», and before the chairman infuriated me to the point of rage quitting. This is as fresh of a start as it gets.

Why on earth would I go back here, you ask? It didn’t work the first time, what makes you think you’ll stick with it this time? What’s going to make this time different? Legitimate questions to be sure, but this time will be different for a few reasons:

1) I’m changing my goals. The goal is no longer «Win the Champion’s League». With the quality of the Welsh league as it is, that’s the equivalent of the Wright brothers saying «Let’s go into space!». It’s simply so astronomically far off, that it’s far too demoralizing to even think of it. Instead, the goal is simply to build Afan Lido into the best team I possibly can. If we manage to win in Europe, fantastic, if we don’t, that’s okay too.

2) I’m not going to promise you that’ll stick with Afan Lido for the next 50 years. I’ll stick with them as long as it feels comfortable, and as long as we’re making solid progress. If, in a few years, some mega team comes by with a contract offer, there’s a chance I’ll take it.

3) I’m getting back to the basics. Similar to the first point, I’ve lost sight of things since I first started playing. I’ll find my joy in wheeling and dealing, scoring big upsets, and finding players with amusing names.

I’m committed to this story on a whole new level. The scenery is the same, buy the view has changed. Who cares if this is the worst league in the world? It’s fun, the teams have character, and damned if all 25 of our fans aren’t ecstatic about our title chances this year. Let’s do this!