Fantasy Football: Lib Dems in the Fantasy Cup - 2nd Round

With fifty-six teams out of one hundred and six surviving the qualifying round and the first round proper, and only one million, forty-eight thousand, five hundred and twenty opponents, hopes were high amongst the ranks of the Liberal Democrats. And it turned out not to be too bad a week...

So, here are some of the highlights from the second round;

Easiest victories

Jonathan Haggart's 'Bandwagonesque' were comfortably better than 'Woohoo', winning 72 - 29, although they did start the day more than six hundred thousand places further up the league table. Meanwhile, Carrie Henderson's 'Excaledonia' defeated 'Athletico Sandyford' 67 - 32, but again, there were five hundred thousand places in her favour. So, perhaps the performance of the week goes to Patrick Fancett's 'Winch United' , beating a team ranked more than seven hundred thousand places above them, 'Pelan2Kayuh FC' , 77 - 74

Most effort-free victories

In a week when the average score was forty-three, compared to the previous week's fourteen, there were unlikely to be many teams winning with scores below thirty, and indeed only two did. We'll come back to one of them later, but congratulations go to Martin Crosby's 'brackpool lock', who scraped through by 28 - 27 against 'oman legends 11'

The top guns

More unexpected defeats saw the end of Alick Cotterill's 'The Welsh Wanglers', beaten 54 - 69 by 'Multiple Scoregasms', and Charlie Garnett's 'Waa Hageeg', beaten 22 - 39 by 'Bonito Samba C.F'. Both sides went into their fixtures ranked in the top 13,000 globally, so there'll be a fair bit of disappointment there.

Meanwhile, Ross Hardie's 'RBC Rossendaal' comfortably defeated 'Irish Blues' 50 - 24, and Amit Patel's 'F.C MI-LO' defeated the evocatively named 'Poborsky's Mullet FC' 47 -40

MP corner

Good news and bad news here, John Leech's 'Mike's Dodgy Beard' scraped past 'Denaf Aitakatta' 66 -65, but Adrian Sanders' 'Torquay Utd' fell 32 - 54 against 'The Charger's'.

And finally, another classic Liberal Democrat underdog victory...

Astonishingly, there were still two survivors from the bottom six of our league, and whilst R Provan's 'The Huhney Monsters' went down 27 - 65 against 'Saint Allstars', there were 1,418,850 places between the two sides.

But in another unlikely performance, Clea Curtis's 'Purple People' squeezed through 15 - 9 against 'I LOVE RACHEL FC', ranked a mere 1,404,173 places better.

Author's postscript

If you're going to go down, do it gloriously, I say. 'Deportivo Creeting' were pipped 66 - 69 by 'the 1 eyed snakes'. In a week when twenty-one Liberal Democrats teams won their ties with less points, it was a spectacular way to go out...

And so, until next week, cue that 'Match of the Day' theme once again...