[MIJB#19]

General Manager notes: Trainwreck? What trainwreck?
Let's call it a shipwreck maybe...

It's official: the Maassluis Merchantmen are 0-7. Indeed, in the 95-season history of this franchise, it's the first time ever that we started a season with 7 straight losses.

7 straight losses.

Seriously. This isn't a bad nightmare, it's for real. I had to repeat myself to let it get to me and it's still doubleyouteeeffing-ing.


After the first five losses, we lost 41-10 in Paris. Can we just blame Earnest Ashley for his triplet of interceptions? Not really, he's not playing on our defense that allowed Paris' running back to gain 198 yards and 3 touchdowns.

Today, we had a chance to save face, hosting the equally disappointing 0-6 Snapfinger Jazz. It turned out that after this game day, we're the only two teams with less than 2 wins. In an interceptionfest (3 picks on each side), we got ran over once again and the only good news was that Bert Ta'Amu returned the favor by running for 141 yards. It didn't quite brush away one of Earnest Ashley's worst showings ever: 11 for 36 (imagine that!) for 142 yards passing, 1 touchdown and 3 interceptions. This was with Clay Gaynor back in action.

Perhaps I've been sleeping at the wheel a bit here? I doubt it though, the game plans are almost identical to what this team was capable of in that 8-1 stretch last season. So much for never changing a winning game plan, huh?

European Division:
1. Gothenburg 7-0
2. Paris 6-1
3. Bordeaux 5-2
4. Maassluis 0-7

Playoffs? I'm still going to tell the team to give it all they've got and try to redeem ourselves into a 9-7 record and see where we can get with that, but with how strong the rest of the division has been so far, that will likely be just enough to finish still fourth. Our rivals rank 1-2-3 in both the Solecismic Power Ratings and the DogBytes Power Rankings. For whatever it's worth: both ranking systems are very clear that we're not the worst team in the league, despite that we're the only winless team. Both have us at the 29th spot, still ahead of 3 other teams, 5 different ones between them, with Snapfinger last by a landslide in both metrics. Yes, the team that overran us in our own Oranje Haven today is considered to be worse than us. Go figure.

No, no suck for luck here. We'll continue to do our best to right the ship. Whatever there's left of it...