Enemy Down

O Captain! My Captain! (How to Grow Old in a Clan, Part 3)

Yes players and team managers it is that time of the month again as our P.M.S. (Please Milk Spam) overpowers us and we milk the spam out of another look at life in a clan with Dekko's half baked & laboured football metaphors dragging us through another round of clan running.

Posted by Dekko on Jun 4th 2009 20:22

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

That is the first verse from ‘O Captain! My Captain’*, a poem from ‘The Drum Taps’ by one of my favourite poets; Walt Whitman and it is about the death of Abraham Lincoln and the North’s winning of the Civil War.
Read it again.
No, really read it again.
For Christ sake just read it!
Good.

The imagery, taken out of context, sits well in an e-sports setting and you can imagine a teams well loved and respected captain, a mighty shot on CoD4 being taken down in the last round of the teams big win, for Captains are important; they’re a talisman during battle and a conduit for the voice of the teams vision and attitude.

A well respected and skillful captain can turn the tide of the game to his teams favor by rallying his troops and making them believe in the final victory.

A good captain can take a team who are two rounds down and talk them up into a glorious win through nowt more than his strong conviction and desire not to let the game slip, in football terms we could mention John Terry for Chelsea and David Beckham for England for their mental fortitude which rallies the players, or there are Arsenal legends such as Tony Adams and Patrick Viera who would battle until the end, leading by example and allowing their passion for their club to succeed to be felt by their team mates.

A captain should be experienced and their experience is invaluable in knowing how to win well when times are tough, to be magnanimous victors and through pain to be gracious in defeat (Man U fans won't understand those last two).

However, a captain needs to be both strong of will and approachable so his players can come to him with any problem they might have so descent doesn’t form in the ranks and those all dreaded cliques don’t form.

Witness the example of William Gallas during his short but eventful reign as Arsenal’s captain. He is a great player but burdened by the responsibility which his captain’s arm band represented he buckled and he lost the dressing room due to his natural inclination to blame others when times got tough, thus he was not good captain material.

Stripped of the arm band he came back as a player stronger than ever, so it shows you the burden of responsibility that taking on the captaincy holds, do not take on the role if you’re not prepared for the many varying tasks it will entail.

A good captain is one of the four corner stones of a strong team, the other three being a good manager, players with a desire to work at being the best and a strong training regime.

If you can confidently hold your head up and say that your clan has all four of these then kudos to you and success will eventually find you but you’ll still have to hunt after it, it won’t turn up at your doorstep with a bouquet and beg you to marry it, no, you’ll be the one doing the courting.

And that’s captains all wrapped up for ya, folks! Now, on another note…………

So UKeSA has taken the (Dekko recommended) route of following a closer path to football rules and terminology so as to have 1) an easy frame of reference that people will instantly know and 2) a rule structure which has 150 years of testing to see what works best allowing us the good fortune of knowing what mistakes not to make.

We should look at this closer and perhaps go deeper, for example; I'm up for the term 'clan' to be erased from the gaming vocabulary, it sounds childish and tacky, like a Dungeons & Dragon geek striving for coolness and credibility amongst his peers and completely missing the mark.

Picture this chum; if you're chatting to someone who is not involved in the games scene in any way, shape or form and you say you're part of a clan it sounds like a foolish endeavor involving plastic swords and tents in the back garden and if the roles were reversed you'd laugh too.

The terms 'team' and 'squad' are far better. For now, the closer we stick to football terminology the easier it'll be to get e-sports recognized in this country.

On that note I reckon that team names need an overhaul with that overused totem of having 'team’ in a clans name being weak and let’s face it; it has been done to death, which is why I always got a cold shudder when anyone said I was in Team Infinity, I thought the name sucked the left nut of the gate keeper of Hades but I compromised.

That name, God, it sounded like a cross between a Major League Soccer team & a sleazy two dollar strip club (but not in a good way).

Lukeye chose it so he shall be forever tarnished. I think we should tie him to a yak and send him out into the wastes, banished for life.

Alas, I must get back to my main point which, in keeping with our football terminology motif, is a warning to all of you clans who are pushing for glory the easy way.

I just wanted to say a word on our ever expanding ‘player contract’ culture (i.e. the promise of a fiscal return for a seasons worth of loyalty) and that, as e-sports get bigger and bigger we must be wary how we create this medium as our actions & re-actions all count due to the fact we’re breaking new ground, we need to consider the fact that some clans players now have contracts and how we must be wary of football sized contracts  that would make a player leave one clan for another simply for money & how this would change the shape, size & structure of e-sports, also that we're closer to this than many people think.

The loyalty for your clan for no other reason than pride and honour amongst your peers is something we should be loathe to loose in so cheap a manner as ones own monetary gain and we should fight and declare from the rafters that e-sports will be a cleaner breed than its pig bladder kicking cousin and money will not be the over riding factor that makes our decisions.

The tendency to get some ‘quick fix’ players in who want easy glory by joining a team on the up and then deserting them when a few losses hit, as happened at xleague (and indeed to hand these players a captaincy) is ever present and it isn’t the way to do things; hard work, camaraderie and playing as a team by building the foundations first using those all important four corner stones will get you the results you crave.

And, in closing I would like to say that Elton John’s album ‘Captain Fantastic’ is in no way connected with this article or indeed neither is it linked to soldiers choking on their own phlegm during a gas attack on the trenches in Dubya Dubya One but I’m sure that hearing it would make them want too and Phattpantz isn't a ninja; he's a deadly talk show host whose Artic white teeth dazzle his opponents to death in seconds.

The End

* You may know the title from the Robin Williams film ‘Dead Poets Society’; you know the one where the idiot rich kid kills himself because his daddy wouldn’t let him act in the school play. Oh my God, wait until the real world hits you, kid! God, grow a pair!