The Final Four
Gameweek 33
(Links to teams will work after the GW33 deadline)
Hung Like a Bony #2 -V- Sporting Wicker Park #15
The fates have given us a real spectacle to watch this weekend. Back in November Hung Like a Bony were top of the Championship and 7th in the rankings. They were on a ten-game winning streak when they faced Sporting Wicker Park, 4th in the PL, but ranked 2nd overall and 3rd in the world. Perhaps unsurprisingly it was the PL’s big-hitters that won both legs of this early-season Semi-Final, and went on to win the tournament. And here we are again.
Last season Sporting Wicker Park won the Intramural League with a 50-40 win over Route 57 FC (R57 later went on to win the IML this season). Earlier this year, SWP won the Champions League, and now they are two wins away from winning the BFFA Cup. So if they are successful here, they could be three weeks away from becoming the first team in the BFFA to win all three.
This time around, it’s Hung who are favourites to win this one-shot knockout. They’ve returned to the top of the Championship, they are now the team ranked second overall and once again they are in a good run of form. The Champions League winners meanwhile have fallen away from chasing the top three and are instead looking over their shoulder at eighth place. However, they are still scoring well and remain in the top twenty (15th in fact). SWP have only outscored Hung three times in the second half of the season, but still have the scent of victory in their nostrils.
StillluvQPR #21 -V- Goleta Hotspur #3
What an incredible season it has been for Goleta. They ended Season 9 ranked 66th in the world, the equivalent of Albania, now after 21 league wins and a mazey cup run they are 38th putting them on a par with global superpower Russia. Currently third in the best-ish rankings, they have scored 144 fantasy points more than StillluvQPR in the league alone, a rate of almost five per gameweek. But consistancy is not their friend this weekend. Whilst they have bagged a lot more points overall, their League One opponents have outscored the lower-league high-flyers 13 times this season, 40% of gameweeks. So one might argue that rankings and league position enter into this preview.
Historically speaking, Goleta Hotspur have suffered from Cupophobia since they helped to form the BFFA back in 2014. They had only won four Cup games before this tournament, drawn twice and lost both replays. They had only once been to the Third Round (and took that game to a replay), and so had never seen a Cup Quarter-Final until three weeks ago. They got there this time when they shocked the world with a giant 78-40 win over BattleVAR Galactico, and followed that up by dramatically edging out league rivals The Phenoms by a point. Now, they are on the edge of securing a place in their first-ever BFFA Cup Final.
StillluvQPR on the other hand have been there before, and won. Their last Semi-Final win came in December 2020 where they won (46-33) in a replay against another S10 Semi-Finalist – Hung Like a Bony. Of course, if both teams win this weekend, that game could be replayed as a title match. In order to get where they are now Stillluv had to go all the way from Round One after placing 29th at the cut-off point in January. There, they narrowly squeezed past newcomers Don’t Tripp on Silva (42-41) and then knocked out the Champion of Champions Housewives Favorite by two (32-30). Thankfully, their Third Round effort was a lot more convincing, beating Ole’s at the Wheel 53-23, and they got exactly the same score again in the QF, but De Bruyne Trousers came a lot closer with 52! It seems like a lot of teams have come close, but the 2020 WInter Cup Champions fight on.
Despite both playing in the BFFA for the last seven years (ten for Hotspur) they have only met three times, in League One in that ill-fated season of 2019/20. Goleta won two of three encounters, but Stillluv were seven points and two places above them when the game was terminated. This season it will be interesting to see how the League Two league leaders will fare against a team who might take their place in the lower league if their fortunes don’t turn around.
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