NMA Blog Cup: Round 1 Results + Round 2 Draw

DGW-24 was round-1 proper of the NMA Blog Cup. Just seven more rounds to go!

With the arrival of the teams who qualified in places 45-92 before the competition, I expected some good performances, and that was certainly the case. Seven of the top scores for the week were involved in round one. There were 40 matches, so the 40 winning teams go through to round two (see the draw below).

There are just 11 ‘non-league’ teams remaining out of the original 77, while 12 ‘league 2’ teams and 17 ‘league 1’ teams made it through, showing that the higher-ranked teams are tending to advance, but by no means all of them. Some notable matches included Tolaria beating MIFFY_FC by 204.5 to 197.5 (I expect MIFFY_FC was a bit miffed by this), while at the other end of the performance spectrum, Gyimah triumphed over Mykonos Nut Shots by 68.5 to 60. The largest victory margin was for Team Rockdelux over Team GMcDTest by 201.5 to 59, while the closest match saw blog chief’s Team DavidBrian beat DISCO ARGYLE by 158 to 154. There was also a team name change, with blog contributor Padawan boldly changing his team name to 2021 Cup Winners — which seemed to be tempting fate, but so far it has worked since his team beat ALLEZ ALLEZ ALLEZ by 130.5 to 114.5.

Congratulations to the 40 winning managers! The draw for round 2 (GW-26) is below. The 20 winning teams will join the 44 top-ranked teams (Premier League and Championship) for round 3 in GW-28.

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Best of luck to all the teams in Round 2, which will take place in game week 26, so now is the time to start preparing!

How did you do? Did you make it through or did something conspire to put you out — Pep rotation or unexpected injuries maybe? How do you feel about your draw?

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