Below are brief profiles on all mentors currently involved in the West Indies Mentoring Programme.
Horatio
Now in my 6th season of Battrick, my experiences range from the hugely dispiriting lows of my first season where I faced loss after loss, to the vastly rewarding high of watching my home grown player finish Season 10 as the West Indies U19s highest average run scorer. In between this there has been a relegation (which was in my first season and best forgotten), and a couple of promotions. There have also been numerous quality signings, alongside a few unfortunate ones! My training program has not only developed an U19 player, but also others of a very high standard. So basically, since joing Battrick I have experienced virtually all aspects of the game!
I appreciate the difficulties when first joining Battrick, and hope to guide you along the path that allows you to avoid the pitfalls I encountered when first logging on.
SundanceJon
Sundancejon is an up and coming manager having only started Battrick in the middle of season 8. He freely admits that he bought badly at the start of his career (beware of buying players with strong primary skills and weak secondary skills!), perhaps due to keenness to play the game rather than learn. Rather than despair this forced him to think deeply about his training strategy and develop a different approach, sacrificing short term gain for long term prosperity. Indeed, the benefits are just about to be realised...
While less experienced than the other managers in the mentoring scheme Jon specialises in developing strategies specific to the needs of a given team and offering a number of alternatives, particularly when developing training programs.
stuc
I started playing battrick in season 5, 1 week before Horatio. I was put ina horrible league to start off with and my team was beaten easily by far superior opposition, it was more than enough to put me off playing the game. However, thanks to knowing a group of people who started at the same time and we set up a 'friendly' competition to give us all a chance of winning a game once in a while. Without this competition i'm sure i wouldn't be playing the game today.
I setup the site battrickleague.co.uk to help run our friendly competitions and i'm always happy to offer help to anyone who registers on the forum. Any manager who says they didn't make a mistake when they 1st started isn't telling the truth! With so much information it is so easy to make a mistake, i just wish there was a system like this in place when i 1st started to help me make less of those mistakes!
Paul_Cannell
Paul Cannell started playing at the end of season 7 and immediately made a bundle of dumb and obvious-with-hindsight mistakes including training the wrong players, investing in academy before reading the rules, getting into debt and confusing batsmen with bowlers.
Luckily though, being in weak OD and FC leagues, he promoted triumphantly, with trumpets blaring in both at the end of season 9. Unluckily though, as a result he "enjoyed" being put to the sword for almost all season 10, yet escaped via play-offs to remain a OD div III manager despite losing members, a very poor buying decision and an attempted managerial coup by the tea ladies that resulted in curfew being imposed on St Vincent for several days.
Cannell believes in developing squad depth (the Uruguayan roster system) rather than superstars, aiming to develop specific strengths and team rotation to play bigger than his squad and has become adept at tempering long-term planning with short-term opportunism. In RL he is convinced that trying to bowl the flipper is psychologically catastrophic for the leg-spin bowler.
Could the following managers please mail me a piece that they would like entered for their profile? Thanks.
Davis88
areimer
berksowl
chrisafi
coachbw
Hayabusa
jonny68
LowellMason
phwsman
ston_ar
timberlake
upthevilla
