Performance rankings - 20th to 26th July 2020

Joensuu overcome their early set backs and turned on a big performance last week

With several weeks of the season now played, teams are starting to find their places in the league and learn which teams they are competing for position against. Here are last weeks performance rankings.


1st Joensuun Maila

Finding form and meeting high expectations can be daunting when you have a new game manager and there have been some significant players come and go from a team. Joensuu found themselves under pressure to perform and meet the level of performance that the media, fans and other teams expected - last week things started to click in to place. Joensuu’s victory over KPL that ended their unbeaten record was huge and contributed 3 points to their 8 in total from last week.


2nd Sotkamon Jymy

Sotkamo remain steadily in 2nd in our performance rankings, with 3 points over IPV and PattU; however their game against Kempele last week showed that teams lower in the league still have the ability to keep games tight. Sotkamo are perhaps the hardest team to beat at the moment; however their opponents last week were not the highest performers in the league, so the real challenge comes on 28th July 2020 when they play Joensuu in the first meeting between the 2 teams since the 2019 final series that saw JoMa clinch their second championship.


3rd Siilinjärven Pesis

SiiPe have had sparks of brilliance this season, such as their 3 games against Pattijoki and their big win against Kempele, who had obliterated SiiPe in the first jakso... yet so far the season has been quite tough and yielded few points. In the previous week’s performance ranking post, Siilinjärvi were the lowest ranked side in our rankings as they took no points from their games. SiiPe’s threat didn’t seem to materialise until last week when they beat Vimpeli 2-1s (0-7, 4-3, 2-0). The result was a major scalp for Siilinjärvi and gave them such a boost up our performance rankings that they ended up in 3rd place despite losing to Joensuu in their other game in the week.


Worst performance - Kankaanpään Maila

Kankaanpää went from the highs of being in our “worthy mention” choice in the last post, to being the only team without points this week. Kankaanpää suffered losses at the hands of IPV and Seinäjoki and are in need of a pick up if they want to keep pace for the playoffs.


Worthy of note - Koskenkorvan Urheilijat

Despite having the player with the most RBI this season (Patrik Wahlsten), Koskenkorva have been a disappointment and did not pick up a single point until 17th July with a win over Manse PP. Whilst KoU didn't win any games last week, they did pick up vital points against Hyvinkää, Seinäjoki and even KPL. This could be the real start of the season for Koskenkorva; however they cannot rely solely on Wahlsten and need some solid performances if they want to shake of being at the bottom end of the table.

Photographs

Cover - (c) Joensuun Maila 2020

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