Festival of the Dragon - Award Ceremony (S24)

[Daleks]

Season 25 has ended and it is once again time for the seasonal Festival of the Dragon Award Ceremony.

If you are seeing this for the first time, welcome! 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.

These awards are split into three stages: the first stage features nominations for the Goal of the Season and Moment of the Season awards, the second stage is users from the team voting for the winners for (almost) all the awards, and the third stage is where we unveil the winners!

There are 6 awards, two of them gather nominations in stage 1, and one of the awards requires no voting as it is a stat only award.

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 the form of just being very active, or perhaps did a lot of work bringing people together via various events or game nights, etc.
‘Low Sweep City’ Card Collector Award – a very important award that has probably one of the longest award names in history. This is an award given to the player that collected the most yellow and red cards this season. We take this award very seriously.
Goal of the Season – This award is featured in the nominations stage. This is for... the goal of the season. Pretty self-explanatory probably.
Moment of the Season – The second of the awards that took part in the nominations stage. This award is for the moment in the season that stuck in our minds the most. The hype and emotions that were the highlight of the 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 (Pandar 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

Finally, special thanks to Ghost for the graphics once again. They have had a big revamp this season as well, making an already excellent presentation into exceptional.

And now, it is time for the first award:

Shanghai Player of the Season

Trick ‘Magic’ Johnson truly brought out the magic this season. If we look at just his overall stats in the league: second highest average rating, won the Golden Eye award for most assists with an incredible 8 (plus scored one goal as well). That is a goal contribution average of 9 in 10 games (10 being the length of the entire season!).

Of course, you also can’t ignore him being second in key passes, first in chances created, and first in player of the match awards.
He was a very clear winner in the eyes of the team, as no one else got more than 1 vote.

Magyar Player of the Season

Greg Evil has had one of the strongest striker performances in the SSL this season. Collecting 10 goals and 2 assists means he had an average of one goal ever match, plus a few assists as cherries on top. This puts him as the second highest goalscorer in the entirety of the SSL this season. He his XG overperformance puts him in 4th place, proving that he is capable of creating a goal out of nothing.

While he doesn’t have a lot of numbers in any other fancy stat, what matters is that when the opportunity for a goal arose, he took it. And that is the most important part of the game.

His cup performance was incredible. While Magyar only played the one match, Evil went out of it with an incredible 9.2 rating and a hat trick.

The only other player in contention was long time Magyar hero James Asprey. He was close to winning this award for the third time in a row. However, when a team does well, the keeper tends to have less to do. Still, an incredible performance from him this season as well, even if he wasn’t as needed.

Locker Room Leader

The wonderful Beavie returns with another Locker Room Leader win. An ever-present presence that is practically the face of the organisation at this point. The locker room would not be the same without her, and we are very happy to have her with us.

‘Low Sweep City’ Card Collector Awards

Appearing for the second time today, Magic Trick Johnson returns to claim another award in our festival, this time the most important award of them all. An incredible 7 yellow card tally in just 12 appearances across all competitions.

Goal of the Season

With the seasons having less matches in general, the number of goals to choose from has become dramatically lower. However, this trivela goal from Voda shows extreme elegance and it was a masterfully executed shot that could have not been harder for the goalkeeper.

The other candidate was an incredible showcase of teamplay, which ended up in Tony Delvecchio making an incredible run into the box to give a quick and precise pass to Thomas Jimotheus, who has done well by making a great run and ultimately scoring the goal. This goal also helped get 3 important points late in the game against a very strong Hollywood FC side.

Moment of the Season

There were plenty of moments to choose from this season. A freshly promoted Albinson and Beavie scored a debut goal together, goalkeeper Shingo Takechi making an incredible triple save against USP, our goalkeeper scoring a penalty against Reykjavik United.
However, the best moment of the season came at the very end. A motivated Rapid Magyar side going up against CS Rova Mpanjaka for the opportunity to be promoted into Division 1. The match was intense, with our watch party providing plenty of loud and colourful chatter.

Two goals, one by veteran Vito Habjanič and the second one by Dr. Squid was all that was needed by Rapid Magyar to prove that they belong in Division 1, and the celebrations were great.

And that was all for this season’s Festival of the Dragon. This season will ultimately go down as the season where the Dragons have proved themselves to be a capable threat. It created many moments of happiness and also sadness. The Dragons were close to a title and lost it in the final matchday in the most tragic way possible, and that is something that is always going to sting and linger forever.

However, what has also been shown is that the team has resiliency, and the capability to bounce back mentally. While many other locker rooms would feel a weakened atmosphere or stay in a state of disappointment, ours has only got stronger. And Rapid Magyar’s success in getting promoted has shown that the team still has a lot of potential.

The Dragons will be back, and Rapid Magyar is ready to prove itself as well.

Thanks again everyone who has been sticking with us all this time and given your support, this wouldn’t be the same without you all!