STATS, STATS AND MORE STATS
As I said earlier, all the players from the 2004/2005 season are here, present and correct. The absolute wealth of information available on each player is simply staggering, every player has a whole raft of info about him which you can peruse to see where his strengths and weaknesses are and maybe do something about them. Everything, and I really do mean everything is covered, from various fitness levels in say speed or agility, through to the player’s attitude to the club and how he’s feeling on and off the pitch.
The beauty of PRM2 lies in just how much attention to these details you actually need to pay. You can quite happily ignore most of the finer micro-management points and only worry about the ones that your e-mails bring to your attention. Certainly, you won’t do as well in the game as you could, but if you find time lacking then skimming over the more trivial stats and getting on and worrying about the tactics won’t affect your playing experience. However, if you live and breathe rugby and can name every British Lions player since 1972, then the stats pages will be so far up your street they’ll be on your doorstep collecting the milk for you each morning.
Now, being able to view the stats is all well and good, but what about if you want to actually change them? This is where the game gets clever, as what you do with a player affects all his stats in one way or another. For example, I had a player constantly telling me he’s had an offer from another club. No amount of money on his contract made him want to stay, so I paid him less out of spite… and to my amazement, he stayed as the other club offered even less. I thought that was the end of it until his training stats started to decline and he was generally grouchy, then his team spirit took a dip too… exactly as it would if it were a real life situation. As soon as I put him up for transfer he was a happy bunny again, and boy was I glad to see the back of the whinging little goit.
But you can affect players’ stats in a positive way too. If a player has been training hard but lacks certain skills, focus his training on those skills and he becomes happier for it. Rest a key player for a match and he becomes more of a team player. This is especially important for your under 19s and under 17s squads, as these are the players you’ll be using in the future. Some player stats aren’t adjustable though and these are really character traits. For example, good old Martin Johnson has great leadership skills, whereas Austin Healey has a nice temperament. You need to be sure to develop the leaders as they can be the key to winning a game, but at the same time you mustn’t forget the rest of the squad. Now if all this sounds over whelming, don’t fret, PRM2 can handle all of this for you if you like, or you can step in at anytime and start getting involved to get the best out of your players.