Greetings and salutations. This blog sets out to cover the world of the up and coming Rugby Management simulation: Blackout Rugby.com.

The game itself may remind you of that classic stalwart of Sports Management: Championship Manager. The Soccer Management game reached its zenith with Championship Manager 2 and 3 with the game played across the soccer world. In Hong Kong, there were (and I believe still are) groups who meet up and play leagues over the space of weekends. The game has even spawned a coin-op look-a-like in Japan's  arcades, mixing the trading of soccer cards with the whole idea of managing a team.

 Well relax, look no further! Because there is a Rugby equivelent, and boy is it great! In this blog, we'll introduce you to the wonders of the game and explain what its all about.

 First of all, its best to explain what Blackout Rugby is. It is a game which runs in your web browser with no need to download anything. It simulates the day to day running of a Rugby Club from the depths of the lower leagues all the way up to competing at the top levels of your national league and contributing stars to the national side. The options of developing players, facilities and tactics are very extensiv and allow you to develop the SuperClub you always wanted. 

 The most important features are:

•  Hiring and firing of training and stadium staff. You can control how many staff you employ from training staff (Head, Attack, Defense, Fitness and Kicking coaches) to stadium staff (cleaners, security, etc). The important thing is that there is an element of long term planning involved in hiring staff, especially training staff. This is because they have rolling contracts of at least four weeks at a time, meaning that if you need to fire staff, you may end up having to pay a large redundancy fee to cancel the contract and that will cost you a fair bit of coin.
• The development and promotion of academy players. Face it, you could buy players in, but only the most prudent and successful of players can afford to do that and so you'll be most likely relying on your academy to supply you with players. You can set funding for the academy and that in turn will have an influence on how good their stats are when they are given the chance at first XV rugby.
• Extensive team and individual training. Team training means that you set your head coach what things he should coach the squad as a whole, usually this means you have two or three things you can train them in. This in turn increases their experience (albeit slowly). Individual training means your specific training staff can focus on specific players. However beware! Your training facilities mean that you'll always have a limited number of slots to coach your player. Also, individual training means you'll be having an effect on how fresh and fit your players are.
• Extensive team selection. Selecting your team doesn't end at selecting your first XV. It means acheiving a balance of players to have as substitutes in case of injury. Although you can't make substitutions mid game, it is still rather handy to have at least a couple of forwards and utility backs in case of injury.
• Interesting match coverage. Matches run in real time, which means you can watch the match commentary feed as it runs or just wander off and do something else. This is because once you've picked your squad and set your tactics, they are now set in stone and will be for the rest of the game. Get it wrong and you won't be able to change it once your opponents start to pile on the points.
• Leagues, Cups and International Rugby. The structure in each country is extensive to the extreme. With lots of domestic leagues, a national cup competiton for each country and selection of National Coaches left to the players themselves. Currently, a Blackout Rugby International Cup is coming up with players in each nation in the Blackout Rugby Universe required to select a player as head coach who in turn has to select a national squad, taking the whole meaning of multiplayer sports management to a whole new level.

These are just some of the major features. Currently there are a fair few Blackout Rugby players on TRF's forums and some of them are quite good at what they do. In the future, hopefully they'll be sharing their hints, tips and advice for managing your ultimate Club team to sucess. Stay tuned until then!