Rugbymania blog

New Elite Cup.

2011-12-27T22:35:00.002+01:00

A new competition is being introduced into RM this season. 'The Elite Cup' will be an International club competition featuring the league and cup winners from each of last seasons national competitions.*

The Elite Cup will consist of eight groups of four teams (drawn randomly, but with the proviso that no two teams from the same country can be placed in the same group).

The group draw for this season can be found on the cup page list under Elite Cup.

Each team will play a home and away leg in the group stages, six matches in total, then the top two teams in each group will advance to the knockout stages of the competition.

*From next season the competition will also contain the previous 'Elite Cup' winner. For this season that place has been filled by a French club as france has the largest number of active managers.

Good Luck to all the competing teams!

Academy change

2011-10-30T11:08:00.006+01:00

As a consequence of the training changes (pyramid training - low level skills train quicker than high level skills), the academy training will be changed to give better outcomes, allowing players to reach a level 6 on trained skills. Without double training, but with two full training seasons on the skill and a little luck. The academy skill display will also change to make things easier. The display will change from 0-100 values to 0.00-10.00 values (the new values will have no connection to the old system), which will make the conversion from academy skills to senior skills very obvious. For instance, a level 4.45 in academy will be equal to 4.45 when the player turns 17 (even though you'll see '4' in your player's page). The decimals will only be visible in the academy, allowing you to tune the player exactly the way you want, and to track evolution week after week. The senior display will remain unchanged. Last thing: The training will contains some random in it. Each week, a random skill will give 0.15 point to all the academy players trained on this skill, another one will gives 0.05 while the 4 others will roughly give what we have today: 0,1. Last thing (part 2): the old random academy training (where any randomly selected skill, even those not being trained, could receive a small bonus) will be removed. Last thing (part 3): some players may grow with 1 or 2 cms when they turn 17. These changes will be active the 10th of december Later on, a fourth training slot for 17-20 years old will be available (february 2012?)

The 3rd RM World Cup.

2011-07-18T02:15:00.003+02:00

We are pleased to announce that the first games of the 3rd RM World Cup will be played on wednesday the 27th of july.

The second group matches will take place the next day, thursday the 28th of july and the final game in each group will happen the day after that, the 29th of july.

The Quarter-final matches will take place on sunday the 31st of july.

The Semi-final games will be played on tuesday the 2nd of august.

The 3rd RM World Cup final will be contested on thursday the 4th of august.

All games will kick off at 17.00 C.E.T.

Here are the teams that qualified for the tournament..

Group A

Italia

Romania

Magyarország

World Barbarians

Group B

New Zealand

U.S.A.

England

Hrvatska

Group C

Australia

South Africa

Wales

Brasil

Group D

France

Scotland

Ireland

Portugal

We wish all the teams in this competition the best of luck!

The 2nd RM 'B' Series International Cup will be played to the same schedule as the World Cup.

Here are the teams that have qualified for this competition.

Group A

Nederland

Polska

Canada

Peru

Group B

Schweiz

España

Belgique

Andorra

Group C

Argentina

Uruguay

Chile

Deutschland

Group D

Sverige

Finland/Norge

Paraguay

Österreich

We also wish all the teams in this competition the best of luck!

Training system change from the 1st of august (new season start).

2011-06-24T14:59:00.006+02:00

Today, the training increase is very linear. You get around 0.2 of a point a week for 17 to 20 years olds. Around 0.125 for 21 to 25 year olds and even less for older players. This means that you need the same number of weeks to jump from level 3 to level 4 as it does from level 17 to level 18.

It has therefore been decided to make a small change to the speed of training. It will go faster than today between level 0 and 10, and slower after this point, for example, it will take 3 weeks to jump from 0 to 1, while the jump from 17 to 18 will take 9 weeks.

Here are some numbers to be more specific:

Week	Next season	Today	Next season	Today	Next season	Today
W	2	2	5	5	9	9
W+1	2.300	2.200	5.263	5.200	9.213	9.200
W+2	2.596	2.400	5.522	5.400	9.422	9.400
W+3	2.889	2.600	5.778	5.600	9.630	9.600
W+4	3.178	2.800	6.030	5.800	9.834	9.800
W+5	3.463	3.000	6.280	6.000	10.036	10.000
W+6	3.745	3.200	6.527	6.200	10.236	10.200
W+7	4.023	3.400	6.770	6.400	10.433	10.400
W+8	4.298	3.600	7.010	6.600	10.627	10.600
W+9	4.569	3.800	7.248	6.800	10.820	10.800
W+10	4.837	4.000	7.482	7.000	11.009	11.000
W+11	5.101	4.200	7.714	7.200	11.197	11.200
W+12	5.363	4.400	7.942	7.400	11.382	11.400
W+13	5.620	4.600	8.168	7.600	11.565	11.600
W+14	5.875	4.800	8.391	7.800	11.745	11.800
W+15	6.127	5.000	8.611	8.000	11.923	12.000
W+16	6.375	5.200	8.828	8.200	12.099	12.200
W+17	6.621	5.400	9.043	8.400	12.273	12.400
W+18	6.863	5.600	9.255	8.600	12.444	12.600
W+19	7.102	5.800	9.464	8.800	12.614	12.800
W+20	7.338	6.000	9.671	9.000	12.781	13.000
W+21	7.571	6.200	9.875	9.200	12.946	13.200
W+22	7.802	6.400	10.077	9.400	13.110	13.400
W+23	8.029	6.600	10.276	9.600	13.271	13.600
W+24	8.254	6.800	10.472	9.800	13.430	13.800
W+25	8.476	7.000	10.666	10.000	13.587	14.000
W+26	8.695	7.200	10.858	10.200	13.742	14.200
W+27	8.911	7.400	11.047	10.400	13.895	14.400
W+28	9.125	7.600	11.234	10.600	14.047	14.600
W+29	9.336	7.800	11.419	10.800	14.196	14.800
W+30	9.544	8.000	11.601	11.000	14.344	15.000
.....
W+50	13.204	12.000	14.804	15.000	16.936
W+51	13.364	12.200	14.944	15.200	17.050
W+52	13.522	12.400	15.082	15.400	17.162
W+53	13.678	12.600	15.218	15.600	17.272
W+54	13.832	12.800	15.353	15.800	17.381
W+55	13.984	13.000	15.486	16.000	17.489
W+56	14.134	13.200	15.618	16.200	17.595
W+57	14.283	13.400	15.747	16.400	17.700
W+58	14.429	13.600	15.876	16.600	17.804
W+59	14.574	13.800	16.002	16.800	17.906
W+60	14.717	14.000	16.127	17.000	18.008
W+61	14.858	14.200	16.250	17.200
W+62	14.997	14.400	16.372	17.400
W+63	15.135	14.600	16.493	17.600
W+64	15.270	14.800	16.612	17.800
W+65	15.404	15.000	16.729	18.000
W+66	15.537	15.200	16.845
W+67	15.668	15.400	16.959
W+68	15.797	15.600	17.072
W+69	15.924	15.800	17.184
W+70	16.050	16.000	17.294
W+71	16.175	16.200	17.403
W+72	16.298	16.400	17.510
W+73	16.419	16.600	17.616
W+74	16.539	16.800	17.721
W+75	16.657	17.000	17.825
W+76	16.774	17.200	17.927
.....

How to read this table: Let's take a player with level 2 in strength. After 5 weeks of today's training, his strength level will be 3, while with the new training, his strength level will be 3.463
Another example: After 8 weeks training, a player starting with a level 5 will have a level 7 while it would have had only 6.6 with today's training ...

On another side, you'lll need 9 weeks to go from 17 to 18, while it requires only 5 weeks with today's training.

Here is a final graph to get a simple overview of the change to come.

RM - Rugby 7's

2011-04-14T09:21:00.002+02:00

Recently one of the most prolific users on the forum came up with an idea that while not exactly new, might make it possible to fulfil some of the wishes many of you have.

To be more specific, here are some of the issues often brought up on the forums:-

firstly, the season is too long, especially when you are not fighting for promotion, or to avoid relegation.
secondly, some users want to spend more time on RM, but there is not enough 'management' to fill the time they have available.
and thirdly, the chance to be the biggest and best club in my country is too remote.

The idea is to have, if you wish (and if you satisfy some conditions that are yet to be decided), a “7s rugby” team as part of your regular XV a side Rugby Union club.

The key features could be (subject to confirmation) :
- You register your 7s club in a fictitious league of your choice (regular leagues won’t be obligatory, the same as in real life 7s)
- These leagues will have groups of 6 teams only, which means a season will be 11 weeks long ( 10 games home and away, plus one week without a game, the off season week, as it is today). Games won’t be played on Saturdays and Sundays, but another day (maybe Monday, Friday or Wednesday? We’ll see about that later).
- No club can enter a league after the season has started.
- A group starts only when it’s full. No bots and no half-empty groups.
- You use the same players you have today. Of course, if you get an injury in a 7s game, you won’t be able to play for any of the teams.
- There won’t be any ticket income from these games, but a little bit of experience will be given, to balance the injury risk (but as injury risk is very low, the increase to experience will also be very small).
- A good time to start this new feature could be September. You’ll get more information during the summer, when the things are discussed, decided and under development.

Your comments and feedback would be appreciated.

HOW TO organize a friendly game

2011-01-18T22:48:00.003+01:00

I frequently get asked how to organize a friendly game, so here is a little tutorial

First, you need to find an opponent.

If you have one in mind, go to their club page and go directly to step 2.

If, however,you don't have an opponent picked out you can choose one from the list of teams that are available. To do this you must navigate to the 'friendly announcements' page.

STEP 1

Here, you'll find some announcements from teams advertising for a friendly game on the left side, and a list of teams currently available for (but not actively seeking) a friendly, randomly chosen on the right side. Click on the link of the team you wish to challenge.

STEP 2

If the team you selected has no friendly scheduled and is active, you'll see the following near the middle of the page.

Choose the date and place of the game (home or away, or even both if neither team has any friendly's scheduled) and click.. It's as easy as that!

Now, you have to wait to see if the challenged club declines or accepts your proposal. As soon as your prospective opponent accepts, you'll be able to set your line up, and the game will happen at the scheduled time and place.

*Note that you can cancel your pending invitation by clicking on the red cross on your club main page.

Please, let me know if this tutorial was interesting or not, and if you need another one concerning some problem you may have.

Cheers

Chris

Note about birthdays

2010-12-27T12:15:00.003+01:00

I regularly get some questions about the recent introduction of player’s birthday's. It’s true that I haven’t given much information when this was done, that’s why I’m writing this message now (better late than never).
You all know how it worked before, don’t you? All players got their birthday when the last day of the season was reached. This had 2 big effects:
- The transfer market was like a rollercoaster between the end of the season (before players get one year older) and the beginning of the new one (when fresh 17 years old players arrive and when some training slots suddenly become available)
- The new user, getting his team right before the end of the season, saw his players getting older before they even played a single game.. while the another, getting his team right after, was able to play a whole season before his players turn one year older. This was very unfair.

The birthday has been introduced to fix both effects (even if the silly season had a kind of spicy taste and wasn’t really a problem when you were used to it).

Each player has now a birthday and ‘lives’ 133 days (19 weeks of 7 days) before getting older, whenever in the season they are created. This will make the transfer market more balanced during the season, but you’ll have to be extra careful when you buy a player, and watch out for his birthday because he may get older the day after you bought him, even if the season has only started.

Each player created before the introduction got a birthday too. The way it has been calculated could have been different … but whatever. The important thing is that they got one, please don’t worry (and don’t ask about ‘how’ and ‘why’). More than 95% of the existing players get their birthday on the day 133, which means no change for them: They'll keep getting older on the last day of the season.

Did this explanation help?

Chris.

World cup format change

2010-07-19T12:01:00.003+02:00

To make upcoming World Cups, as well as national teams (NT) friendlies more exciting, it has been decided that:

- The next World Cup will be split in two: First and Second division World Cup, each containing 16 nations (4 groups of 4 nations each, as previously).

The 8 nations who qualified to the quarter-finals in the previous World Cup are automatically qualified for the next one, and will play against each other in a round robin tournament in 7 pre-determined fixtures to define their seedings in the next World Cup. These 8 teams are Italy, France, New Zealand, Romania, Scotland, Australia, Sweden and England

The remaining 24 nations will have to go through a qualifying tournament, to be played in a 7 round Swiss system. The seedings will be defined using their rankings after the next friendlies (July 21st). The top 8 teams in the qualifying tournament will play the first division World Cup, whereas the remaining 16 nations will play in the second division. The final positions in the qualifying tournament will be used to define the seedings of these 24 nations both in the first and second division World Cups.

Game engine v3.1

2010-05-24T15:54:00.023+02:00

Until now, the game engine called v3.0 has been in use for all games.

As of now, you'll be able to setup your friendlies using either v3.0 or the new v3.1 game engine. We don't recommend you use v3.1 in tournaments or in friendlies where result means a lot, as bugs or other unpleasant things may happen!

This post will be regularly updated and will be the only official source to list the new features and differences between v3.0 and v3.1. Please check it regularly to get the latest information, as it will be updated when new features become available. (hopefully once or twice a week.)

NEW FEATURES and MODIFICATIONS.
1. After a scrum, the v3.0 engine accepted an action starting with the hooker holding the ball. This was completely unrealistic and won't happen anymore. Only numbers 8, 9 or 10 will start with the ball.
2. After a scrum, the v3.0 didn't see any problem with the fact that the first receiver could give the ball to a first or second row player. That was unrealistic as the front five are just leaving the scrum and looking for the ball. v3.1 will no longer decide that the first pass after a scrum can go to a first or second row player.
3. There will be a walk over if a team has less than 15 players on the pitch at kickoff (in v3.0, it was possible to start with only 14 players on the pitch).
4. Flankers will get tired! They'll stop tackling if they don't have enough stamina. One level is enough for 10 minutes of tackling. Which means that a flanker with a stamina level 3 will be able to tackle during the first 30 minutes only, a stamina level of 7 will give enough energy to tackle until the 70th minute ... a stamina level of 11 should be enough to tackle until the end of extra time. If a flanker is tired, another player will attempt the tackle instead.

5. Line-out. The formula for the two receivers fighting for the ball (still based on handling and height only) is slightly changed to find out who wins the ball in the end. The passing skill of the hooker is used to find "where to throw the ball". The higher the passing skill of the hooker, the more chance he will find a good receiver. (In v3.0, the best receiver of the team was always chosen by the thrower.) The number of potential receivers is unchanged and consists of the five players that make up second and third rows of each team.

6.Injuries. Some injuries will be so small that, although a replacement will need to be used in the match, the player injured will not need to use the sick bay and will still be available for selection the next day. On top of this, the probability of an injury occurring is slightly increased.

7.The Captain. In v3.1 the captain will play a small but significant role in your teams performance. In previous versions (v1, v2, and v3.0) your team would attempt to score a drop goal at random. Teams going into the last minutes of a game with three tries would, instead of attempting to secure a Bonus Point by scoring a fourth try, sometimes attempt a drop goal. The same principle applied when your team was losing by 9 points with a few minutes to go and no drop goal is attempted to secure a losing Bonus Point. In v3.1 the experience level of the player you select as your captain will determine whether these drop goals will be attempted or not, according to the situation your team finds itself in during the final stages of each match.
8. You can now choose the behaviour of 4 of your backs (10,12,13 and 15). According to your choice, they'll mainly pass the ball or try to run through the defensive line when they have the ball. The greyed choices (disabled) are only displayed to remind you how the others act (this is unchanged), and won't be enabled later.

v3.1 won't be in use for official games (league and cup) before season 15, which means that we have a little less than a season to test it.

Time to vote

2010-03-03T16:25:00.003+01:00

There are 3 things I need to tell you.
First of all, the vote for your country’s manager has started, please go in the ‘International’ menu, ‘NT vote’ tab to vote for your favorite candidate who’ll be in charge for your national team during the next 2 seasons.

The second thing is about stamina. It’s true that stamina isn’t in use in v3.0 game engine and that’s not normal. The development of v3.1 is going to start soon and will fix this. When v3.1 will be quite ready, we’ll use it for friendlies (hopefully in may) and for all games when the next season will start, at the end of june. V3.1 will only fix some small things like stamina use, as well as some modifications in formulas when a ruck, a restart kickoff … happens. You’ll be informed sometime in april.

Last thing I wanted to say is that team training will, as from now and on top of the regular team training you all know, give a very little amount of ‘another skill’ (chosen randomly between the 6 main skills strength, tackling, speed, passing, handling and kicking) for all the players receiving team training (up to 25 players between 17 and 30). The amount is very little (around 2%), but as so many players are receiving it every week, you may see some unexpected pops for some player from week to week.

Have fun

First World Cup: Ferbruary 9th-17th

2010-01-11T13:26:00.000+01:00

So, here we are. 2010 has started and so has winter. Fortunately, The real cold weather doesn't have any effect on RM, and no game needs to be postponed because of it. The world cup is soon starting, and here are some informations:
It will be 8 groups of 4 (teams ranked 1st, 9th, 17th and 25th together etc ...), with the 2 bests of each group qualified for the last 16. The group games will be played on 9th, 10th and 11th of february. Last 16 will take place on saturday the 13th and the last 8 the day after (St Valentine's day). Semi finals, third place final and final will take place on tuesday the 16th and wednesday the 17th.
You probably saw at there is a forum available at the bottom of the league page. Please use it instead of official forums. The official forums threads related to specific groups will be closed shortly as they haven't any interest for most of the visitors/readers.

Happy new year to all of you, from me and the whole staff. By the way, we got a bunch of users who have been willing to translate the whole site into german. That's a good new for RM and I would want to thank them a lot.
Chris109

SEO & Fan section

2009-11-04T13:37:00.000+01:00

These last days have been used to make the website more visible for search engines like Google or Bing for instance (so called SEO: 'search engine optimization'). That's something I never really cared of (and it was probably stupid) but my favorite magazine's november issue had a big article on it, which gave me tips and tricks to get RM's ranking higher, and a good reason to start working with it. I'm not yet finished with it, and the results aren't as good as I was expecting ... but it's anyway better, much better than what it was. Let's try to see the half-full glass instead of half-empty.

The number of users is very stable these days, even it felt suddenly with 30 units when a big case of multi-account was discovered and sorted out. A single user had around 30 teams all over the world and played with almost all of them. Impressive! Is RM that good? or is this user that sick ? The choice is your. I hope anyway we'll be able to reach 7000 real users quite soon.

The november month wil be used to fix some small issues with the game engine, as well as opening a new small section in RM to speak about real rugby (Heineken cup, tests, transfers ...). Nothing big, but a nice little place to exchange opinions and get informations about the Rugby world. this will give users a third place to use some time in RM (together with the transfer market and the forums).

All you want to know about combos

2009-10-20T09:55:00.001+02:00

Isn't it amazing ? A new article less than 24 hours after the previous one.

I know I shouldn't do it, because it's gonna give you bad habits, but I want to give some explanations about "Combos", as I feel that it is not as clear as I thought for most of you.

First of all, I remind you that combos are not required. You can select one, two or none for your next game.
Then, what is happening ?
Sometimes in the game, the first player (let's call him mister Willis) starting an action may have a "flash" and think "I feel like starting a combo right now". Then the game engine looks like if there is some combo starting with the position mister Willis does have. If there is at least one, the engine chooses it (or one of them) and the combo is starting. If there is no available combo, mister Willis forgets about his cunning idea and continue to play as usual.

So, what does it means ?
- The first player of a combo must have the ball at the beginning of an action to let a combo starts. If you have 2 combos starting with the fullback and your fullback doesn't start any action, you'll have no chance to perform any combo
- There is some random in it. It will happen that no player will have a flash during a game, or many flashes. The average number of flash your players will have during a game is 2 per combo selected, which means it may be 0 or 6 for this game or that game.

Two more things to know to get it all.
- The little "flash" icon you'll see is a little ambiguous. In fact, it shows what "looks like a combo" and not what "is a combo". Let's take an exemple:
You have selected only one combo 9-10-15-7-2.
There is an action starting with the scrumhalf, who gives the ball to the flyhalf. But then the flyhalf is tackled. What is the start of an unfinished combo or not? We don't know it as we don't know what was the plan of the fly half if he had broken the tackle. Was he planning to give it to one of his centres or to the fullback because the team was performing a combo? We don't know. The game report shows it anyway as a combo, to notify you that it was "maybe" a combo. You see what I mean ?
- The combo stops of course when the tryline is reached, to score a try. It seems obvious but I got some user asking me why one of his player scored while the combo wasn't complete.

I think and hope you now have all the necessary information to understand the combos. Use the comments if you have some remaining questions, or to tell me that my explanations are clear enough now.

Keep in touch, probably at the end of this month

Beginning of the 12th season

2009-10-19T11:57:00.001+02:00

Among the complaints I regularely gets from users, the biggest one is, without any doubt, my lack of information to users. What's been done, what is in the pipe, what what will come later ...That's the main reason for this blog. I'm more the kind of guy who prefer doing things than speaking about things ... but I'll try to force myself to come regularely with some fresh news. My goal is to write an article at least twice a month. We'll see if I reach it or not.

So, first of all: a little information about the situation.
- The game engine V3.0 is now in use in the whole website. I'll make probably a post more specific about that later but I already can say that a v3.1 is going to be released at the end of this season for friendlies only. Which means we'll use v3.1 for friendlies and v3.0 for cup, league and international games in the season 13. The season 14 will use only v3.1
- A little add-on very useful came last week end. You're now able to cancel the sale of a player you just put on sale if you made a clumsy click or filled in a wrong minimum price. You have only 60 minuts to do it though.
- The domain http://www.rugbymania.org/ is back under my control. I owned it for 2 or 3 years ago but I managed to make it unavailable and unusable for months. Now, I finally succeeded to get the hand on it and it's under control again. Using http://www.rugbymania.org/ or http://www.rugbymania.net/ won't soon make any difference.

During this season, the following things are going to happen:
- Work on national teams to prepare the first World cup, probably happening in the beginning of februar 2010.
- Analyzis about the things which will be a part of v3.1 (more tactics, more displayed information for games analysis, possibility to kick for line-outs, up-and-unders, defensive kicks ... )
- Small other things (delete all players bookmarks, league forum, more stats, better layout ...)

Keep in touch