Lush Gutters

It all started with an itch that just could not be scratched.

After three seasons of Fantasy Football, Max Christopher George Selby had much with which to be satisfied. He was, after all, the big kahuna, the top dog, the biggest name in the ProMax World Championship, having won two of the three world titles to be contested. Sure, last season was a disappointment, a fifth place finish marking a new low for The Rhythmic Schism. However, one poor season could not overshadow what had come before; the nail-biting triumph in 2018/19 in which The Schism snatched the first ever world title by a miniscule four points on the last day of the campaign; the season-long masterclass the following year that saw Selby perched atop the league from first game to last on his way to winning a second title, this time at an absolute canter.

2020/21 had been an undeniable dud, but nobody truly believed that Selby would stay down for long, and by the halfway stage in the 2021/22 season he was already well on his way to a third world title. The Worthington siblings had been overhauled, and the gap was widening each week. By Gameweek 27, The Schism had put more than a hundred points between him and Kelly’s Heroes in second. The bookies had already started to pay out. Immortality beckoned.

And yet something was missing. Despite making the summit of the ProMax World Championship his own personal property, Selby kept falling maddeningly short in his pursuit of the elusive, the ethereal, the inexplicably unobtainable…

… ProMax Classic Grand.

Hope

It just didn’t make any sense.

In the first season of ProMax Fantasy Football, The Rhythmic Schism had dramatically hunted down Calum Bolland’s Pint of Wine, who at the halfway stage had lead the league by a hundred points, in a last-day title showdown for the ages. Yet despite this, Selby found himself in the Classic Grand bronze medal position, shunted aside by two teams that finished far, far below him in terms of overall points. It was bizarre enough that Amy Lewis, 9th place finisher in the World Championship, had snatched the PMCG trophy, but to be bumped another place by Colin Wilkinson – the same Colin Wilkinson who bagged the fewest goals of any other team, played only one of his three chips, made only three transfers over the entire campaign, and finished twelfth out of 15 in the WC – was nothing short of a sick joke.

This was clearly some anamalous horse manure, and would surely not happen again.

Only it did. In 2019/20, despite a gargantuan season in which The Schism achieved the most captain’s points, most bonus points, most points from chips, five manager of the month titles, joint most clean sheets, second-highest goals tally, and the World Championship title won by a colossal one-hundred-and-fifty-points, this was somehow – somef**kinghow! – worth only Classic Grand silver, as a half-bored Tom Barklamb took advantage of the Premier League’s pandemic interruption to refocus his campaign and win nine of his last ten to net his first ProMax title win. It just didn’t seem fair.

As they say in baseball, noone bats a thousand, and in 2020/21 The Schism just kept striking out. In both previous seasons the Classic Grand was won by a team ending the World Championship in 5th place or lower, and yet despite similar mediocrity The Schism could muster only another bronze medal finish. Ryann Whealy, his own wife, who the previous year could barely have named a single Premier League player, harnessed her powers as a data analyst to post the highest points tally in Classic Grand history.

Oh, and her finishing position in the World Championship that season? 4th. One place above The Rhythmic Schism.

The fates weren’t just out to get Max Selby, they were actively giving him the finger. If he was going to win the Classic Grand, it was going to take something truly exhausting.

Anxiety

And thus began the 2021/22 season.

The early pace was relentless; four teams ended GW6 with five wins. By GW13 Glen Woodbridge’s Ikea had fought their way to the top with eleven wins and two defeats, half as many as The Schism. What made matters worse for Selby was the manner in which those defeats arose; three of the four had come against the only other gameweek score higher than his, and two of the losses were by fewer than three points. It was a f**king fix!! The fates just could not allow it! If Selby was going to take on the gods, he would have to become one himself.

And so, Selby entered a higher realm. In the ten games after GW13 The Rhythmic Schism won nine. No-one could touch him. Yet still he couldn’t shake off the chasing pack. Rivals sprang up left and right. At first, Glen Woodbridge’s Ikea battled viciously to maintain control of the summit, but his challenge fell away after a mid-season slump saw him suffer a run of seven defeats in nine games.

Next came the Rat King himself. Scott Worthington – easily the league’s most improved player – started to gnaw his way into contention, yet he too would stumble, racking up eight losses in ten games as the calendar ticked over into April. The wolf was no longer at the door.

Only two would be left to duke it out. If Max Selby was to reach nirvana, he was going to have to tackle the woman he promised to share his life with, but more importantly, the current reigning Classic Grand champion, Ryann Whealy. And she wasn’t dicking around.

Betrayal

Up until that point, The Rhythmic Schism had been essentially perfect. With exactly three-quarters of the season gone the team topped the leaderboard in all categories, from goals scored, to clean sheets, to captain’s points, the works. Yet somehow, despite all this, Rybear Club had managed to keep the pace with a pursuit zombie-like in its relentlessness. The pressure cranked up, and up, and up.

And then one day, he snapped. With another World Championship all but secure, Selby – who until that point had negotiated the transfer market with Daniel Levy-like frugality – just went and absolutely lost his god-damned mind and spaffed away twenty points on swaps, almost double his entire season’s expenditure up to that point.

On the surface it might have seemed a wild, unnecessary gamble, yet from one angle there was a method to this madness; he knew his opponent that week – reigning ProMax World Champion Jessi Parker – was primed to use a chip, so with defeat likely and with his lead in the WC unassailable, he gambled on a revamp to galvanise his team and secure the Classic Grand.

Only one problem: it didn’t work.

In came City’s top goalscorer Riyad Mahrez, who promptly fell victim to the insanity-generator that is Pep Roulette, suddenly finding he couldn’t buy his way onto the pitch. Kevin de Bruyne was dropped for Mo Salah, whose form promptly dipped whilst the Belgian began raking in huge hauls. Jean-Philippe Mateta scored once and was never heard from again. And somehow, for some reason, Max saw fit to drop Sergio Reguilon for Wolves’ second-choice left back, Rayan Ait-Nouri. It was a meltdown of Keegan-esque proportions.

The Rhythmic Schism would win only one of the next four games. Rybear Club, meanwhile, was in the midst of a hot-streak, having lost only one of her previous ten. Selby had flown just too close to the sun. The sea beckoned below.

Agony

It is often noted that a team can win every game in the ProMax Classic Grand despite setting the gameweek’s second-lowest score each week, just as long as their opponents keep setting the lowest. It takes outrageous good fortune, of course, but it’s theoretically doable. The opposite is also true, however, and The Rhythmic Schism were the embodiment of this. Over the course of the 2021/22 season, The Schism would be beaten by the only higher GW score more times than any other team, and lose by three points or fewer on more occasions than anyone. The bad luck didn’t end there; Selby would leave more points on the bench than all but Glen Woodbridge. The dice just wouldn’t fall his way.

Perfection hadn’t been enough, and in trying to exceed perfection Selby had broken. There was nowhere left to go. For three and three-quarter seasons, the fates had toyed with him, dangled the carrot, and each time cruelly snatched it away.

Finally, with the sun setting on another season, the football gods – content with their persecutions – stopped, picked up their ball, and went home.

Relief

Over the final eight games The Rhythmic Schism would lose only two, winning five including the crucial title-decider against Rybear Club. The skies had finally cleared. Justice would finally be permitted.

The fates, on occasion, would come back just to f**k with Selby; a Neal Maupay penalty miss cost The Schism a certain win against SargunarCorp, Riyad Mahrez – making a rare late season start – missed one of his own in a hair’s breadth defeat to Geezo’s Geezers, and four yellow cards turned a certain victory into an unhelpful draw against Marching On Together. But by then it was too late. For the fourth season out of four, the ProMax Classic Grand had been decided with two games left to play. For the first time ever, it had been won by the team with the most overall points.

It took two-thousand-four-hundred-and-fifty-three. No other team in the 2021/22 Classic Grand got within two hundred.

In order to harpoon his white whale, Max Selby had needed to orchestrate one of the most Herculean seasons in ProMax Fantasy Football history. Of the ten available manager of the month titles for the 2021/22 campaign, Selby won seven (one tied), including a run of five in a row between October and February. When the dust had settled on gameweek 38, The Rhythmic Schism topped the charts for goals scored, set a new record for most clean sheets in a season, set a new record for points gained from chips overall, set a new Free Hit record, set the gameweek’s highest score more than any other side by far, and was within a mere eighteen points of also taking the award for most returns from the captain. For the first time ever, a manager had posted a winning record against every single opponent. The gods had made him sweat, and sweat he most certainly had.

The chase was over. After four years of heartbreak, the Classic Grand – and the ProMax Fantasy Football double – was his.

Resentment

There may be some that would hope the appetite for success would be sated after such a brilliant but mentally destabilising season. Many hoped that in achieving his dream, Selby could relax and take it easy, perhaps becoming another Parker-esque artisanal hipster who never buys a player whose parents could pick them out of a crowd.

Alas, he has seen too much. The mental strain of incessant, unrewarded excellence can not simply be undone in one moment of glorious release. Beneath his charming and intangibly alluring body beats a heart beset with bitterness. The water under the bridge has swept the damn thing away, and will take the entire town with it. After so much pain one double was never going to be enough. Selby is out for blood.

The gods have a debt to pay.