09-08-2024, 03:52 PMFrenchie Wrote: If I was able to do it with Ireland, then all the other small nations should be able to. The winning team of S71 had 4 irish creates, one of which was the fed head. The winning team of S77 had 3, one of which was an irish recreate from a user I recruited for the S71 gold, the other two being mainstays from the early days. I don't think people had interest in Ireland as a country more than they had interest in the plan I had and the role I pitched them. This isn't to call anyone out, but with proper planning and good recruiting, smaller feds absolutely can win despite not having a massive pool of initial creates, looking at Latvia for example as a small fed who's been very active in recruiting and is on their way to a gold medal win sooner or later. This might be circumstantial, but nonetheless an example of it not mattering as much IMO.

I'm not saying its a perfect 1:1 correlation but there's absolutely something there. Additionally, Ireland has been a successful IIHF(SHL IIHF) fed for probably 10 IRL years, and Latvian users used to be one of the biggest communities on the site. There's much more of a core to fall back on than any of the other options here. smaller feds can win, and i admire the people who put in the work to make that happen, but i think you'd much rather add a fed that has that user base vs one that has to be built up from scratch.