A Season of Goals, Guts, and Glorious Disaster. The complete story of the Lossie Phantoms’ inaugural BFBS Pro League 2025 campaign.

BFBS PRO LEAGUE 2025

FOREWORD

Every good story starts with something slightly official. Something that the main plot wraps itself around and ties itself in pieces to deliver something they hope will be spectacular. This is no different. Let me get the party political line of what the BFBS Pro League 2025 was all about before some Phantom spirit is applied and we embark on a roller coaster review of that summer.

“The BFBS Pro League 2025 was an esports league created by the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) exclusively for the UK Armed Forces community. Featuring Rocket League, the competition brought together serving personnel, reservists, veterans, MOD civil servants, cadets, Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel and their families in an eight-week online qualifying competition, that culminated in a live grand final. Built around accessibility, community and friendly competition, the league offers over £15,000 in prizes while showcasing the very best of military esports.“

That is the official description of the event that we were about to get involved with. It is both accurate and informative, but it left out quite an important part from our point of view… Pure panic.

You see, somewhere between “accessible to all skill levels” and “community engagement” lurked an uncomfortable realisation that “all skill levels” apparently included people capable of playing Rocket League with the serene confidence of car flying neurosurgeons.

And then there was us, the Mighty Lossie Phantoms who definitely were not a Service representative side. We weren’t a hand-picked collection of military esports veterans. We weren’t backed by analysts, coaches or sponsors. We were simply the only RAF Station prepared to throw itself into the fire and ask questions afterwards.

The ambitions set for the team were beautifully modest. Participate in our first tournament in the new Lossie Phantoms Esports Arena (the Phantom Realm) as the Lossie Phantoms franchise for the very first time. It wasn’t about winning or losing, simply having our team representing under our logo was the biggest achievement as we say ‘hello’ to the world of esports.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. If we could meet a few teams roughly our standard, win a couple rounds and have a laugh along the way then that would be incredible. Maybe write a nice article after every week celebrating these successes would help share our story within the same world.

Instead, we spent the next eight weeks repeatedly discovering entirely new ways to lose to some of the finest Rocket League players in the British Armed Forces. It was magnificent, but that’s because this story was never really about scorelines.

It was about a certain, core three Aviators, a Station community, and the strange little club that quietly became one of the happiest places on RAF Lossiemouth every Wednesday evening.

CHAPTER 1: MEET THE TEAM

Allow me the honour of introducing the Mighty Lossie Phantoms for the BFBS Pro League 2025. Every football club has its legends. Some arrive with Ballon d’Ors, some arrive with medals and some… well some arrive carrying the wrong controller cable for the PC they are going to be using that evening.

The Lossie Phantoms had a bit of everything.

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AS1(T) Ryan Beesla – Captain, Leader, Legend.

Every team needs someone to steer the ship, and Ryan did exactly that. There was a reassuring calm about him throughout the campaign. Whether losing 11-0 to the tournament favourites or quietly grimacing as he checked the stats of the next opponent, he somehow convinced everyone that things were under control. They usually weren’t, but that’s hardly the point.

Ryan brought something else to the Phantoms and that was credibility. Having previously been a part of the elite RAF Stormshadows development group, he understood the standard needed to compete at the top level. More importantly, he understood how to keep morale alive when your team had just conceded more goals than most people score in a fortnight of casual Rocket League.

Leadership isn’t always measured by success. Sometimes it’s measured by convincing everyone to log in again next Wednesday and Ryan did that every single week. The Lossie Phantoms Rocket League team could not have asked for a better Captain of the team and he continues within the role today.

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AS1(T) Anthony Kariuki – The Chief Executive Officer of Boost Collection

Anthony approached Rocket League with a philosophy unlike any other on the team, nor like anyone I saw on the stream over those 8 weeks. Some players chase goals and others chased assists. However, Anthony chased boost. Relentlessly! I am not embellishing here, but entire economies have been built on fewer resources than Anthony consumed during one Wednesday evening. I am sure that there will be some scientists that will compare this phenomenon to those who collected toilet rolls during the Covid-19 Pandemic. He called it “Boost Starving” and after a quick Google, it turns out it is a genuine tactic.

But how one player could simultaneously collect the most boost, use the most boost and somehow also waste the most boost remains one of the greatest talking points of the entire series.

Off the pitch he was equally entertaining. Watching Anthony prepare for match night became an event in itself. There would be problems with the headset, problems with USB ports or his controller not being recognised. Onward he would go to another PC and try again.

Lossie Phantom committee members were running around performing emergency technical surgery while Anthony wandered from machine to machine like someone deliberately trying to board the wrong train. Eventually… It worked. The thing is that he would be there an hour before kick off, but what was he doing all that time!?

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AS1(T) Lucas Codd – The Calm One

Every squad needs balance and Lucas provided it. If Ryan supplied leadership and Anthony supplied… chaos, Lucas quietly stitched everything together.

Except, occasionally, when he was on course, or at Cosford, or experiencing what history will simply record as “internet issues.” Whether these were connected events remains classified until at least 2055 thanks to the Official Secrets Act.

When he was present, the difference was obvious. Steady, reliable, composed. He was also, unquestionably, the owner of the tournament’s best username!

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The Supporting Cast

Every season has guest appearances and the Phantoms collected a few excellent ones along the way. Especially when Lucas had his internet issues.

Patrick “Paddy” Dixon arrived like he’d always belonged there. He didn’t bring any fuss or drama, he simply brought a solid Rocket League play set. In football he would’ve been called a utility player. But he doesn’t like Football, he likes Rugby. And I don’t know what a utility player is in Rugby. A Quarterback?

Regardless, Every dressing room loves a utility player. Alex Cherry’s loan spell was considerably shorter but infinitely louder. He made that one save that spawned a certain immortal line on the BFBS Live Stream (spoilers). Quite!

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Supporting the players through thick and thin were the Lossie Phantoms Committee Members. What you’re never on the live streams is that every Rocket League Team has someone desperately trying to reset a fuse box for the arena because of a rogue weekend power surge. Some of the great untold stories of that 8 week season wasn’t what happened on the pitch, it was everything happening around it. Controllers refusing to connect, windows updates arriving at exactly the wrong moment, display settings developing minds of their own, headsets staging industrial strike action.

Support staff becoming part IT department, part counsellor, part PC mechanic, all while trying to help the team start matches on time. Nobody ever applauded the people crawling behind desks trying to get a certain somebody’s PC working! But without them, there wouldn’t have been a Phantom story to tell.

CHAPTER 2: EIGHT WEEKS THAT NOBODY SAW COMING

Every season of sport, TV or indeed video game franchises tell a story. Some are fairy tales, some are tragedies, but most are somewhere in between. The Lossie Phantoms somehow managed all three before the end of July 2025.

WEEK 1

I have learnt that hope is a Dangerous Thing. Being an England supporter since the Italia ’90 Football World Cup, going into each tournament with ‘hope’ and expectancy is dangerous. Over the years I have grown numb to the pain and the stupid “is it coming home?” questions. I now expect disappointment at all times with the men’s team – especially when they reach a final.

This was new and somehow different as we started the journey, and we began our story with optimism. The Lossie Phantoms arrived for Week One carrying that uniquely intoxicating cocktail of confidence and complete ignorance. Nobody knew quite what standard to expect. The BFBS Pro League had advertised itself as open to everyone, from casual players to experienced competitors, and naturally the imagination drifted towards an evening of evenly matched contests, last-minute winners and perhaps the odd upset.

Instead, the Phantoms discovered that “experienced competitors” apparently included people who had long since evolved beyond the need for mistakes. Reality arrived quickly.

The losses came and were accompanied with more losses. Yet something rather important happened on that first evening. The arena filled, people stayed and watched the team and the BFBS Live Stream. Work finished, controllers appeared, and colleagues gathered behind three players representing the Lossie Phantoms for the very first time. Whilst the scoreboards weren’t pretty, the atmosphere certainly was and there I had a realisation.

When I was 16, I played for my village football team, Montacute 91 FC. I was immensely proud to wear the same shirt as my friends and family members that had played for them before, especially at my young age. At that time, we weren’t the greatest team and shipped some goals, but it never stopped us going again the following week, but we were like a band of brothers who were in it together.

You see, some foundations are built using concrete and with enough shock you can break this. However, a foundation built with optimism? Hope? Belief? Now that is unbreakable. The Phantoms despite the losses started to build something special in these humble moments. And this spirit would prove unbreakable over the coming weeks and beyond in everything they did.

WEEK 2

By Week Two everyone on the Station understood where the Phantoms sat in the Rocket League food chain. That chair was somewhere between tables marked as “enthusiastic” and “target practice” and there was zero mercy. There were defeats. You might actually call them heavy defeats. There was a meeting with RAF Stormshadows (the number 1 team in the RAF) that resembled a family hatchback accidentally joining the British Grand Prix.

Final scorelines rarely tell the whole story, but these ones did. And yet still nobody rage quit, left early or mocked the team. Instead the supporters and the team laughed it off. Someone inevitably suggested, “We’ll get them next week.” Obviously on the back of the results we were getting served up this was ridiculous, but in another way it was emotionally essential and the season’s defining characteristics quietly emerged. Whilst the results would come and mostly go somewhere else, the morale in the club was going nowhere.

WEEK 3

Sport has an extraordinary habit of rewarding perseverance, but not with trophies. I am writing about the FA Cup giant killer moments where Stevenage Borough beat Swindon Town, Olivier Panis winning the Monaco Grand Prix in a Peugeot and who could forget the Iceberg winning a 1v1 with the Titanic in the original Battle of the Atlantic.

Week 3 saw the Lossie Phantoms deliver glimpses of what they might become as they secured the kinds of victories and round wins that made you double check the standings to see how much of a scalp they had taken.

WEEK 4

The BFBS Pro League seemed to develop an irritating tendency to punish our confidence almost immediately and Week Four duly obliged as the scorelines delivered their normal programming.

The Sparrowhawks reminded everyone why they occupied the top end of the standings at that time, OMNIA proved that passing was, in fact, allowed, Whale Done! swam away happily and Los Pollos Hermanos served up one final helping of heartbreak after producing perhaps the closest series of the campaign.

There was also a cameo, enter the new face – Patrick “Paddy” Dixon. He quickly adopted the same Phantom spirit as his team mates and if there was any pressure applied on him then he never showed it as he simply got on with it. Every team needs players like this, the reliable ones who make others feel better.

WEEK 5

Some matches disappear into history, whilst others burn on continuously like the sun. Another new face arrived at the team in place of Lucas and Alex Cherry arrived with the casual confidence of someone borrowing a lawnmower from the next door neighbour.

Instead of the lawnmower though, he borrowed something far more desirable – immortality. He produced a save that brought a line from the Broadcast Streamer that will echo through the ages of the Lossie Phantoms…

“Cherry could save the Titanic.”

This was instantly etched into Phantom folklore. Sure, it wasn’t enough to win the match, but it added to the ethos the team were building. Elsewhere that week, it continued to swing wildly between glorious triumph and controlled demolition.

Gamebred were dispatched despite the Phantoms already having secured victory after two games. Naturally they played the third anyway and I have no idea why. Nobody has ever produced a convincing explanation. It was best of three and the Phantoms wanted a 3-0… just because! Perhaps there is no reason, but sometimes the joy of the game doesn’t need a reason. Sometimes it simply feels right.

WEEK 6

Ask any super fan of a TV show or sports team and they will tell you that certain people simply belong together. Batman and Robin, The Avengers, Sheringham & Shearer, Baskin & Robbins… The list goes on, but our Holy Trinity of Ryan, Anthony and Lucas is right up there on this list.

After courses, absences, internet conspiracies and enough scheduling conflicts to challenge NATO logistics, the original trio were finally reunited. Unfortunately for the Phantoms, the Stormshadows probably earnt a spot on that list, and the Hurricanes… and the Tempests!

Somehow in this game week the Lossie Phantoms drew the top three RAF sides and arrived one after another with the enthusiasm of Jaws at the Amity Island beach party and it was brutal. But hidden among the ripped flesh and bruises, something unmistakable started to happen. The passing improved, rotations tightened and communication sharpened.

Don’t get me wrong, the scorelines still occasionally resembled emergency telephone numbers, but the team underneath them looked transformed having undergone a period of absence.

WEEK 7

Now the team were starting to play and build some momentum. Nobody thought the evening was going to be easy, or the group was going to be easy. Indeed, the fixture list looked less like a draw and more like somebody at tournament headquarters had accidentally clicked “Nightmare Mode.”

Drawn against the Falcons, Stormshadows, Sparrowhawks and OMNIA wasn’t ideal, but there was another team in the group. The showdown against UVG was the match everyone in the arena wanted. This wasn’t because it would decide the tournament, or bring home a trophy. It was match against someone at our level and an opportunity to right the previous close defeats we had suffered against them. It mattered, and the Phantoms won.

Proof, if any were still needed, that seven weeks of punishment had quietly produced something rather dangerous. The Lossie Phantoms were a proper team. The defeats that followed suddenly looked different. They were closer, competitive and the opponents were having to play a lot smarter to earn the results.

WEEK 8

I don’t know how many times the phrase ‘save the best until last’ has been said over the years. Sometimes it is a throw away phrase that is overplayed. Week 8 of the BFBS Pro League delivered results that nobody believed. It simply wasn’t meant to happen as this was going to be a Wednesday evening sweet goodbye to the series in our final appearance.

I was hoping to take one last photograph. One last “thanks for coming” to the players, committee members and supporters. The group was drawn and once again the tables were stacked against us and the odds of qualifying for a Thursday night shoot out were as microscopic as Malta winning the Cricket World Cup.

Somehow, through grit and determination the last qualifying match arrived and all we had to do was beat 493 Squadron to reach immortality. The Phantoms duly obliged as they beat the stuffing out of them. Against every expectation, RAF Lossiemouth’s Station team squeezed into the knockout stages alongside the elite of the Armed Forces Rocket League.

Thursday night came around and this event was a lot shorter and even more extreme than a climate change fuelled summer in Elgin without air conditioning. OMNIA ended their first chance and The Sparrowhawks closed another.

Officially: The Lossie Phantoms finished 8th in the knockout stage.

Unofficially: They’d already won something considerably bigger. Respect.

When the controllers were unplugged and the arena lights were turned off for the last time, nobody was talking about goal difference. They were talking about the journey throughout the course of the summer. For me, that’s how I knew we had a story worth remembering.

CHAPTER THREE: THE NUMBERS DON’T LIE AND THEY DON’T TAKE PITY

Benjamin Disraeli once said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Well Benjamin Disraeli never met the Lossie Phantoms, because if he did then he would know that statistics are wonderful things. They remove emotion, they ignore context and most importantly, they refuse to acknowledge that losing 11-0 to the eventual champions is, in many ways, considerably more respectable than beating your mate 2-1 on a Tuesday evening down at the Phantom Realm for a can of Liquid Death and a Milky Way Crispy Roll. They simply record what happened in a cool, clinical and occasionally hilarious way.

Reader, it is my pleasure to present you the Lossie Phantoms BFBS Pro League 2025 in numbers.

Head-to-Head Records

“Some rivalries were closer than others.”