This is not a drill everyone, the Real Hatfield Town is imminent!
I am incredibly excited to announce that this year’s Hatfield Town FC save is almost ready to go. Everything is set up at my end, and it looks as though the database created by Dan (Twitter) will be released this week. All being well, I will be running some test streams this week to check my OBS settings are going to work (clearly this post aged well) and then I’ll be streaming setting up the team this coming weekend, details still TBC.
In the past, I have struggled somewhat to come up with exciting new ideas for the series, however this year it’s been really easy. In case you missed it, I recently announced a partnership with Hatfield Town FC where I will act as the club’s Director of Media and virtual manager. You can read my announcement here and the club’s announcement here. As a result of this, I decided for the first time ever to incorporate the real life team into the Football Manager save. This means all first team players and staff will be in the game, with me as the manager! I have also recreated the club’s official kits for the 2020/21 season, with a specially designed third kit that will likely never be seen but still looks cool (to me anyway). You can check all three kits out below.
Sadly this season has been declared null and void due to current circumstances, therefore I would love to use this series as a way to see out the season for Hatfield Town, as well as hopefully raise the club’s profile to help them survive these times. 2021 sees the club commemorating its 135th anniversary, so what better way to honour that then by celebrating the current squad and staff who all work hard to keep the club running. The club have recently announced their participation in a series of tournaments to fill the void between the end of this season and the start of the next (announcement here) and I’ll be covering those within the series as well as for the club when they happen.
To go back to Football Manager itself, I also want to test myself this year by exploring more of the game. I will of course still delegate tasks to the assistant manager, as well as having the Director of Football worry about most of the contracts, but this year I really want to delve more into the player development side of the game. It is my aim to keep the current squad for as long as possible during the save, so in order to do this I need to keep them developing throughout the early years. To do this, I will be creating my own training programmes, as well as building team tactics specifically around the players I have available. I will be keeping match plans to a minimum, only using them sporadically as I try to manage things myself from the touchlines. Basically, I want to be a lot more hands on this time around.
I will also be focusing heavily on the youth setup, bringing through the new generation to play alongside the current squad. Hatfield Town have developed their youth section a lot over the last couple of years, and this will of course be reflected within the save. Last year’s The Youthful Hatfield Town was just the start of what I am planning to do this year, and considering how well it went last year, I cannot wait to see how awesome it’ll be this year!
Finally, I want to talk about how the series will work with YouTube and Twitch. This year, I want to have 2 types of content a week, with one being a stream at some point each weekend and the other being a pre-recorded video. Each stream will be a single match, taking place over the full 90 minutes, with the other being either a collection of matches or some tactical/training updates. Streams will be broadcast on YouTube and Twitch simultaneously. As the series will be a lot more hands on, I want to make videos looking at the tactical side of football as well as just playing matches. I also wanted to stream full matches to make up for the lack of real life football this season. Plus it gives us a good chance to chat about football whilst watching football, what’s not to love!?
The reasons I can’t commit to a specific day on weekends right now are that once football begins again for Hatfield I will be helping run matchday productions meaning I might not be able to stream a certain day. Also, as a fan of 2 other football clubs I can’t always promise I won’t be watching them play (poor excuse I know but I’m sticking to it!) Midweek videos are scheduled for Tuesdays currently at 7pm UTC but this may change depending on response. I will also say now that each match shown during streams will not follow on immediately from the previous stream. As Hatfield are several leagues below the football league, I want to get through the early seasons as quick as possible, like with previous series. I will of course show important matches in both the streams and videos, but for the most part there will be a lot of offline playing too.
I know there are people who subscribe to my channel who don’t watch nor like football, and I know to many I’m the OpenTTD guy, but as I’ve said many times in the past I actually like football more than I like railways, which is a pretty big statement for me to make. This series is huge for me, being part of the club is a real privilege and I’m very much looking forward to getting started. It’ll be really awesome to see as many of you as possible supporting the series either by joining in with the streams or by interacting with the videos. Most of the conversation will be football based as you can imagine, but I’ll course be happy to talk about other series during streams so anyone from the M4J community is welcome to join in.
Thanks everyone for reading. Let me know what you think of the Hatfield kits for this series, and I’ll see you all for either the test stream/s or the first stream of the series!
Stay safe everyone, and until next time I will see you soon!