Ukrainian Superleague

Here's something I wrote about the league before we started playing our matches. I didn't get a chance to publish it however, so here it is now:

Our first match is this weekend, so before we start playing I thought I'd give an overview of the league. There are eight teams in the Superleague, all spread pretty evenly across the country. The top two teams play Challenge Cup (though only Lokomotiv Kharkov this year), while the 8th place team goes down. There is a playoff between the top two teams from the "High League" (the 2nd best) to see who moves into the Superleague. Winning a match 3-0 or 3-1 is worth three points, and a 3-2 match is worth two points for the winner and one for the loser.

The match format for the league is such that teams play each other twice on the weekend, with one match Saturday and one match Sunday. For matches that aren't too far away (I'm guessing less than 5-6 hours) we travel on Friday by bus, with a training session when we arrive. For matches that are farther away we will go by overnight train on Thursdays. We have a team bus, which you can see in the picture, which is nice inside as well, and there is plenty of space between the seats and a hot water dispenser in the back to make tea and coffee.

The playoffs have a different format this year than they have had in previous years in Ukraine. It was explained once to me (though not very well), and this is how I understood it to be: The top four teams at the end of the regular season have some kind of group play with two matches against each team, and the team with the best overall record after this group round is crowned champion.

The consensus favorite to win the league this year is the aforementioned Lokomotiv Kharkov, with a team from Crimea called Crimsoda another contender. (Yeah. Like "cream soda.") Lokomotiv Kiev is traditionally a top team, though they lost a lot of sponsorship money last year so all but two of their veteran players have left the club. Our team is solid all around, though somewhat young compared to Kharkov and Crimsoda, and we should have a chance to do something good in the playoffs.