The Pikes moved to 6-0 yesterday, winning 54-12. I would have to say it was the most complete game we have played this year. We also scored a +42 score differential, which puts us at +145 for the year. Now on the surface this may seem as I enjoy running up the score on teams, well I don’t it is just how the rules are set up unfortunately. Let me explain further.
Germany is made up of 6 tier leagues; 1st Bundesliga (GFL 1), 2nd Bundesliga (GFL 2), Regionalliga, Oberliga, Verbandsliga, and Landesliga. Now these leagues are in placed based on the strength of a team and they change every year. At the end of every season you will have teams that will be “relegated” or “promoted”. So if you get 1st Place in one league you can have the opportunity to move up to the next league (promotion), while if you were to get last place in a league you would be a candidate to move down a league (relegated). Now the rules for who goes up or down vary from league to league. Between GFL 1 and GFL 2 last year the 1st Place teams in each division (North and South) in GFL 2 automatically were promoted to GFL 1, while the 2nd Place teams in GFL 2 played the last place teams in GFL 1 in a home and home series to determine if there would be a promotion/relegation. While the last place teams in GFL 2 were automatically relegated to Regionalliga, but the 1st Place teams have to play the 1st Place team from another Regionalliga league to determine who gets promoted. Confused yet? Now I can’t tell you how the other leagues work when it comes to promotion and relegation, mainly because I don’t care but also I think my head would explode trying to figure it all out.
So back to the original thought, why is point differential important? The reason is because that is the 1st tiebreaker used in an event of a tie and during these promotion games. In the promotion games you play a game at each team’s home field. If the teams split then the tiebreaker is point differential. In our league this year they are using point differential as the #1 tiebreaker, hence the importance of being at +145 after 6 games. It makes for some decisions in the 4th quarter. Yesterday we were winning 47-6 going into the last quarter. Usually this a great time to play all your backups and gain them some experience. However, because there was still a whole quarter to play we had to hold off playing all our backups until 8 minutes was left. It’s a risky move because you do put a starter or key player in harms way if the team you are playing gets chippy, but you also can’t give up any cheap points as those 7-14 points could be the difference between 1st and 2nd place.
So now we sit at 6-0, 1st place in the Regionalliga Center league. The team that is chasing us is currently 4-0. We don’t play them until the last game of the season, and were both on a collision course to be 9-0 when we do play. I’m not getting to ahead of myself as we still have 3 games left, and we will have to be crisp to win all three. But with the way both teams are playing, it is shaping up to be a great finish.
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