Originally posted by Baca Loco
Even without Mama L.'s crystal ball I think I got this one covered. A history of coming close but not quite getting there and the reasonably well-publicized push by the RL to sign up international established and/or skilled players. Maybe even a bit of the Miami result thrown in, too. Conventional wisdom then looks at the combined strength of teams for NXL 06 and wonders if last season wasn't the RL's best shot.
Personally I don't subscribe to that theory but it is of substance that the Legion is looking hard for outside talent and I have always thought the RL had a particular weakness that the training regime won't overcome.
As to the rest of the guesses it's purely a function of popularity or name recognition.
PS--extra added prediction. Field layout released has an over/under of 15 or 16. (Combined score of average match point total.) Which is low.
More bases covered than the US Navy with that post mate
The strength of the RL is not as one might think it to be in their player base.
Their player base at the moment is merely symptomatic of the 'process' and it is this process that lies at the very heart of the Russian Legion's strength.
Sergey has over the years now developed an iterative training program that produces top end ballers.
As we all know, the initial input to any iterative function is crucial in determining the integrity of what is eventually produced and for the most part, Sergey’s input to this process has been from a player pool of a hundred maybes…abysmally low.
Over the past year or so, he has realized the process has limitations as Paul (Baca) suggests and for the reasons I have just explained and so he has opened up to players who are not Russian thereby increasing the chances of the qualitative aspect of his input to the process.
Nexus and Legion (as well as Joy Division) have just come to an arrangement with Sergey whereby selected players from my team can be introduced to the process and trained by Sergey for the purposes of playing for the Legion in his XBall NXL team and at the same time upholding their responsibilities to Nexus.
For me and Magued, we get our players honed and trained better than we could ever do ourselves and for Sergey, he gets better quality input players.
On top of this type inter-team arrangement, Sergey has also widened his team acceptance to the US as well as Europe as has been documented on this site. He fully realizes that taking high quality players and plugging them into the process increases his chances of putting out a better XBall team to contest in the NXL and that’s really the bottom line here in his thinking.
It’s all about end product, it’s all about the process.
And so, I think the RL’s standard of performances will be maintained and eventually start to improve as the process starts to bite into the new flood of players.
Once Sergey has acquired that Holy Grail of paintball in that he has great talent in his team and then great training, nothing will stop him.
