Festival of the Dragon - Award Ceremony (S25)

[Daleks]

It has been a long time coming, but it is finally time to recap the Season 25 Festival of the Dragon awards ceremony. This was intended to come out earlier, but various things have prevented me from taking the time to write this down. However, we are now finally here.

Once again, an explanation for those seeing this for the first time: The Festival of the Dragon is an award ceremony hosted by the Shanghai Dragons/Rapid Magyar organisation to celebrate the users in our locker room, their players and to immortalize the best moments that have happened during the season.

There are 3 stages to this award process. First, pretty much anyone can nominate goals and moments for the Goal of the Season and Moment of the Season awards.
Afterwards, members of the organisation vote for each of the awards, apart from the prestigious ‘Low Sweep City’ Card Collector Award, which is just a statistic award. Then, the third stage is the live reveal in our locker room!

For this season we have the same 6 awards as always. As a recap, this is what they are

These awards are:
Shanghai Player of the Season – an award given to the player who was the most valuable player for The Shanghai Dragons FC team throughout the whole season (league AND cup)
Magyar Player of the Season – same as the previous award, but for a player that played for Rapid Magyar SC.
Locker Room Leader – an award given to the user who positively contributed the most to the SHA/MAG locker room. This could be via just being very active, or perhaps they did a lot of work bringing people together via various events or game nights, etc. They also have to be part of the team as well.
‘Low Sweep City’ Card Collector Award – the most prestigious and sought after reward in our organisation. This award goes to whatever played in the entire org has collected the most cards in all competitions.
Goal of the Season – This award is featured in the nominations stage. This is for the goal of the season. Pretty self-explanatory.
Moment of the Season – The second of the awards that takes part in the nominations stage. This award is for the moment in the season that was the most memorable and will stay as the thing we will remember most from this season.

There are also some additional rules such as:

-You can't vote for yourself for Player of the Season and Locker Room Leader
-Previous locker room leader can't be voted on for a season (Beavie for this season)
-Staff can't be selected for Locker Room Leader
-Staff votes are tiebreakers.

The staff for this season were:
North
Daleks
Darthus

And once again, special thanks to Ghost for another season of providing us with great graphics. It would not feel the same without his magic touch!

And now, it is time for the first award:

Shanghai Player of the Season

After several seasons of being considered the best GK in the SSL, as well as winning an MVP award, it is only now that Shingo Takechi has finally managed to win a Shanghai Player of the Season award. Takechi continues to be a stable wall in goal and continues to have one of the highest average ratings in the team, this season only being behind second most voted Sam Albinson.
Takechi boasted the second highest save percentage in the league, as well as the second highest XG prevented. Shanghai has had an incredibly unlucky season, but Takechi did his best to try to avert the disaster, and he continues to cement himself as one of the best goalkeepers in SSL history.

Magyar Player of the Season

Jordan Bamford came into our team looking for one final challenge as he looks to look towards winding down his career. Rapid Magyar found themselves in a terrifying challenging Minors Division 1, and the veteran presence of Jordan Bamford helped to keep them calm.
Bamford has had several clutch moments on the league that made us secure wins which should have had no business getting. He found himself in the top 10 for key passes, as well as having a great number of defensive contributions as he also found himself in the top 10 for successful tackles and interceptions.

Locker Room Leader

One of the OGs, an always present presence in the locker room, homercrates has always been one of the biggest hearts of the team since day 1. Him being drafted was due to incredible moments of kindness and empathy, which he has continued to this very day.
He has also been making his signature Notts cards for every new member of the team since the beginning. He is also one of the biggest cheer leaders for Rapid Magyar SC, a team he has actually never played, but is always excited to cheer for. They are the future of our organisation, after all.
This is an award that has been long awaited, and he has deserved every bit of it.

‘Low Sweep City’ Card Collector Awards

HELL YEAH, MY FAVOURITE. THE FAMOUS/INFAMOUS ‘LOW SWEEP CITY’ CARD COLLECTOR AWARD. ARE YOU READY FOR THE WINNER OF THIS INCREDIBLE AWARD?
BIGMAC JOHNSON, OUR MIDFIELD GUARDIAN, THE MAGIC BIGMACESSI. 6 YELLOW CARDS!!!
This actually makes him the winner with the least cards in the awards history so far. Perhaps that was the issue with Shanghai this season. Not enough violence?

Goal of the Season

While we were not exactly blessed with a lot of goals this season, Allie Bunson has managed to wow us nonetheless with a wonderfully placed volley that came from a pass by Sam Albinson. It was a matter of right place, right time, and a willingness to just bloody blast it with full power. Quite a bit of anger released by our resident Scorbunny.

Moment of the Season

In a season marked by a lot of downs, there was one incredible moment that will be always remembered. Vito Habjanič’s last goal in his entire career. Said goal also happened in a very important promotion/relegation match, and it has basically won us the game by swinging the momentum dramatically towards our side. There is no doubt that his goal is the reason Rapid Magyar SC stayed in Divisions 1. He ended his career by giving our youth players a brighter future and confidence.
We will always cherish the time Vito Habjanič has spent in our time. Coming from a team that was ready to send him down early, but he knew he still has a lot to show in the majors.

Thank you for everything, Vito!

And that is all for this season of the Festival of the Dragon. This season has obviously had a lot of extreme downs. The Dragons' path of barely losing the title last season to being auto relegated has been immensely painful and also extremely unlucky. The Dragons don’t deserve such a fate. However, I have a lot of faith in seeing us soar back to the top in no time. No use wallowing in the past, it is time to refocus back to the path infront. Besides, Rapid Magyar SC survival has been inspiration and a real high point. They survived in Division 1 when the odds were against them.

Thanks once again to everyone in the team and everyone that supports us. This journey would not be enjoyable without all of you, and we hope for several more seasons of more fun and laughter!