Festival of the Dragon - SHA/MAG Award Ceremony (S22)

[Daleks]

The Festival of The Dragon is a new award ceremony hosted by the Shanghai Dragons/Rapid Magyar organization. Its intent is to celebrate players and users’ accomplishments that happened throughout the season, as well as celebrate the team itself.

Me and North want to give a lot of thanks to Ghost, who has created the graphics you will see today!

There were 5 awards for which members of the organization could vote on, plus a secret 6th award that was unveiled during the live awards ceremony.
The awards were as follows:

Shanghai Player of the Season – an award given to the player who was the overall most valuable player for The Shanghai Dragons FC team.
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 something creatively to the locker room.
‘Low Sweep City’ Card Collector Award – an award that will go down in history as the football award with the longest name in existence, this was the 6th secret award that was talked about earlier. 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 – probably requires little explanation. An award for the best goal of the season.
Moment of the Season – an award for the moment in the season that stuck in our minds the most. A memorable event that made us scream, laugh, cry. Something that we will always remember when we think back to this season.

Of course, a lot of these awards have a few caveats. For the two Player of the Season awards, you couldn’t vote for yourself. For Locker Room Leader, staff and the user who won the award in the previous season were excluded (though, considering this was the first ever instance of this award, the second clause obviously had no effect). Finally, staff’s votes were valued more for the purpose of tiebreaks.

With these explanations out of the way, let us start with the first award:

Shanghai Player of the Season

Der Kapitan, Thomas Hohenhahn, was picked as this season’s Shanghai Player of the Season!
Hohenhahn had an explosive start of the season, placing himself near the top for most goals scored in the Majors. 15 goals is a solid collection in a Shanghai team that is still finding its footing. The striker also has some weirdly impressive defensive stats as well. Ranked 2nd highest average rating in Shanghai, North was one of the pieces that made Shanghai able to rise above the rest of the bottom of the table teams.

This award was one of the most contested. Not too far behind was the DM/CD hybrid BigMac Johnson. Players at such positions are practically required to have some offensive input in the game to be valued highly by the game’s rating system. However, BM Johnson managed to collect an impressive number of defensive stats and had incredible consistency, something even the game’s rating system could not ignore. 20 key headers, 47 tackles won, 46 interceptions, 46 clearances (why is it all almost the same number?) and 25 blocks.

There is also Shingo Takechi. He has had an incredible season. Not just in the team, but in the whole league. Highest average rating out of all GKs, highest XG prevention, highest save percentage. All of this while facing a lot more shots than the average team. Incredible season by Takechi that deserves a lot of praise.

Magyar Player of the Season

James ‘Big Game’ Asprey put the feelings of fear and dread into every opposing player. He had a monstrous season. Out of 5 Player of the Match awards that minors GK received this season, 4 of them are Asprey. This broke a record.

XG prevention was 16.73. That is another record broken

4 out of 5 penalties saved. That ties the record (though the current holder did it in less games).

Plus, second highest average rating and second highest save percentage, both lead’s taken by different GKs.

Asprey’s performance alone turned very crucial games around and was a big reason as to how Rapid Magyar managed to reach the top of the table midway through the season. A lot of his Player of the Match performances were against the top teams as well, including the game where AS Paris suffered their only loss of the season.
This is one of the best GK seasons in history, and this award is very deserved.

However, Allie Bunson and Petter Lind also got some recognition. The Magyar Wall has been very famous this season. Bunson’s highlight was leading the interceptions stat for a long time, only for unfortunate injuries making her just barely drop to 3rd. 6th in successful tackles is also very notable.

Petter Lind, while not having any insane outlier stats in particular, he has been all around very good on defence. The heir to the Lind dynasty has been having a great start to his career and has recently received the news of a promotion to Shanghai. If his performances in the Majors stay as consistent as they were in the Minors, he might go down as a legendary defender in the future.

Locker Room Leader

Beavie has brought joy in the locker room ever since she entered it. Energetic, creative and surprisingly good in Rematch considering the amount of playtime she has. The locker room would not feel the same without her.

However, while Beavie was the winner by a majority, a significant number of users were voted for in this award. In fact, this vote had the biggest variety of votes out of all the awards.
This award is a thanks for the entire locker room who manages to make the place as fantastic as it is, and the experience I’ve had in this league would not be anywhere close to the same if it wasn’t for this team.

‘Low Sweep City’ Card Collector Award

As mentioned before, this was the secret 6th award that was revealed during the award ceremony, dedicated to a stat that has been a favourite of our organization since the beginning.

This is truly an award worthy of prestige. Of course, it would be ludicrous if Stig Stampe, the man who has started it all, wasn’t the winner of this award. Alongside him, Tony Delvecchio and Damian DeSoto have also made us incredibly proud, as all of them collected 8 yellow cards each across all competitions.

Truly, there is no greater prestige than winning this award.

Goal of the Season
This award was the most contested of them all, with the winning goal just barely getting an extra vote over the other two big contenders. The upcoming graphic will also have a clip of the winning goal.

This incredible team goal by Albinson, Stampe, Grimbergen and Evil was magical. An incredible display of teamwork, producing an impossible sequence of passes in the forms of three perfectly placed headers, which ended up landing in front of a running Albinson. This goal was the winning goal in a very important game against Kaapstad, and it completed Albinson’s hattrick.

The first goal that barely lost was BigMac Johnson’s incredible individual display (goal replay). Playing as CB, he took the ball from the opposing player, made an insane run where he dribbled past several defenders, and scored a goal in what was an important game against Montreal United. No one knew this tank could dribble so well, but apparently he is the reincarnation of Messi. BigMacessi.

The second goal that barely lost out was Hohenhahn’s bicycle kick goal against Liffeyside (goal replay. This goal honestly felt like bullying. Liffeyside’s first ever game as an organization, and they had a bicycle goal scored against them in what was already a rough game. This was Hohenhahn’s fifth goal this match...

It might have had less impact due to the fact it was a friendly, but it was a great display of skill nonetheless.

The other contenders was Greg Evil's goal while injured (goal replay) and Joe Martin's great first touch shot from range that resulted in a goal (goal replay)

Moment of the Season

Rapid Magyar SC’s win against AS Paris. There is no greater moment than the one where we were all nervously watching this game via voice and text chat. Being close behind AS Paris in the standings, this game was very important. The amount of yelling, excitement, fear and hype was incredible.

When Asprey saved a penalty, there was suddenly a lot of hope. When the English wonderkid Sam Albinson scored the third goal to take the lead, I can’t even describe the atmosphere during that moment.

When the ref blew the final whistle, celebrations were had. Rapid Magyar SC has done the impossible and brought down Goliath, and placed themselves on top of the table alongside AS Paris.

Unfortunately, the second half of the season ended up not going our way. However, during those 15 minutes or so, we have experienced one of the greatest moments in our sim league journey. It’s memories like that which make this league so great, and it is memories like that which will stay with us for a long time.

And that concludes The Festival of the Dragon. We thank everyone for participating in the nominations and in the voting. We are incredibly proud to be part of this locker room, and we are very excited to see where the upcoming seasons brings us next.

Thank you all; the members of our organization, to all who support us, and to all who spent their time reading this article. May the future be bright for the Dragons.

[Beavie]

Been a joy to be part of this team. Congrats to the winners!

And I am glad Allie is immortalized in a silly trophy. <3

[Domffl]

Wow the dedication into this. I love it

[lemonoppy]

That low sweep trophy is pog af 5/5