Semi-Finals Round 2 Tipping

Keeping it simple, the scores so far, in this still very tight contest:

Jacob: 37
John: 34
Tony: 33
Drsimmo: 33
Hamish: 32
Dave: 31

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Drsimmo is the only one who scored at all!

Thanks for playing Mike, by the way. You didn't score anyway, but forgive me if I don't include you in the list at this late stage of the season.

My tips for this round:
Newcastle Jets FC vs Sydney FC
Newcastle 2:0

Melbourne Victory FC vs Adelaide United FC
Adelaide 1:0

Jacob's tips:
Newcastle Jets FC vs Sydney FC
Newcastle 2:1

Melbourne Victory FC vs Adelaide United FC
Melbourne 1:0

Tipping the First Round of Finals

Well with the 21 rounds over with Jacob is the clear leader of this competition. Tony is the only one who got a three pointer this week by predicting the Sydney vs Roar stalemate, and has thereby leapt straight back into contention. There are less points at stake each round now, but anyone can still win. It's also less predictable than ever.

Here are the pre-final scores:
Jacob: 37
John: 34
Tony: 33
Hamish: 32
Dave: 31
Drsimmo: 30

My tips for this weekend:
Sydney FC vs Newcastle Jets FC
Newcastle 1:3

Adelaide United FC vs Melbourne Victory FC
Adelaide 2:0

Jacob's Tips:
Sydney FC vs Newcastle Jets FC
Newcastle 0:2

Adelaide United FC vs Melbourne Victory FC
Adelaide 2:0

May the games be brilliant, may the best teams win, may good sportsmanship prevail on and off the field, and may there be no serious injuries.

A post script re: The Roar. Ke Serah. We can talk about ifs if we like. I'm not sure but I think it was Hegel who said something like, "If, if, if... if the sea boiled it would be full of cooked fish." Enough of ifs. "After all," said Scarlet, "tomorrow is another day."

Cheers to all.

Rump Steak and Footy with Jacob

I had everything set up to 'watch' this Newcastle vs Melbourne game in the best way possible. I had the A-League 'live' site up as well as the SBS live scoring site, and had Melbourne radio playing live meanwhile.

Jacob walked into my room. Neighbours had finished. He said, "Let's go."

"What?"

"Let's go to town. This game decides the fate of Queensland man."

"Ok, we'll be late, but let's go. Put your shoes on."

We caught the train, and when we arrived at the Pig & Whistle, we had missed half an hour but it was still nil all.

I'd expected maybe a lot of Roar fans as the Pig & Whistle always play A-League games and I think is one of the official Roar fan bars. We could mostly only spot obvious Sydney supporters.

After the first Newcastle goal, I asked one of them (we were about one foot away from a whole table of these black shirts), "Who do you hope will win?"

"Melbourne."

"I actually hope Newcastle will win. You see I'm a Roar supporter." I stopped myself, in courtesy, from saying, "I really want Queensland to be the ones to knock you guys out of the competition!" So I probably didn't quite make sense.

"But if Melbourne win, then Roar are safe as well as Sydney."

"Yeah," I said, "but it will make it a cracker of a game tomorrow."

The bloke went back to his iced chocolate.

What? A bunch of young male Sydney fans drinking coffees and iced milk drinks?

No...

They did look very uniform. I noticed their shirts weren't actually jerseys, but collared shirts, with all the sponsors upon them, and they all had matching track pants as well. They weren't drinking, and then one said, "I'm going to go for a massage. At 8.30 we can get a massage."

I turned to the bloke again. "You aren't the team are you?"

"No."

How silly of me. "Are you playing for the Cove in the curtain raiser?"

"No."

"Um, it's just that you all have matching track pants, and, um, none of you are drinking."

"Ok, we're the players."

"What's your name?"

"David."

"David who?"

"David Carney."

"Oh."

I'll only make one real note. These guys clearly wanted Melbourne to win. They were noticeably stunned as Newcastle walked over Melbourne. In their eyes - each and every one of the eight or nine of them there - was, "Oh fuck, we might not make the finals." They did not look confident to me. As Jacob pointed out, maybe there were a bunch of Roar players somewhere looking the same way. The only certainty is, this one tomorrow night is really going to be a cracker.

As they left (as soon as the fourth goal was scored), I said to David Zdrilic, "May the best team win." He said, "Thanks mate," and I reckon that was about as much as either of us could have expected from the other.

I meant it though. May the best team win. I reckon the Roar are the best team, but in under twenty-four hours, we'll all know.

Final Pre-Final Soothsaying (with indulgent trimmings)

I'm feeling a bit inadequate as a blogger as apart from a 'Yee-har' with no content and a couple of speculation round-ups I haven't really said much in between the tipping posts. Not even so much as a review since the one on Jimmy Greaves' first book, which - let's face it - was a little odd.

So before I get to the tipping I'm going to reward my loyal readers with some self-indulgent prattle, because that's all I've really got.

One reason for the lack of reviews is because I've allowed my reading to diverge from football for a bit. I just finished Vanero Armanno's Firehead, which left me gasping for something cool and clear. It's way outside any genre I've ever explored really, being a sort of twisted romantic mystery set in the Brisbane of my lifetime, from about 1975 to 1995. Eeerie, like a parallel biography. I knew every street and public event referred to. Hard corruption and violence, sensitive (but a little twisted and self-conscious) eroticism, and a mystery with an unexpected and disturbing conclusion which I'm still not sure was happy or not. There was one reference to football about half way through but I can't remember the detail or context.

Before that I read the Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes I to III). The first one by Terry Brooks is absolute rubbish, worse than the movie if that is even possible for a book, the second by RA Salvatore was readable, the third by Matthew Stover was actually quite interesting. There were no references to football whatsoever, but as I read I had recurrent flashes of speculation about what FIFA would do if we met humanoid creatures from another planet. I mean the challenge would be on to create a universal confederation and standardise the rules, again. If a sci-fi author hasn't tried to deal with this issue it's about bloody time they did.

Before that I read SE Hinton's Outsiders to Jacob (in two marathon sessions), which I haven't read since I was not much older than him. I wept all the way through, not always appropriately as I knew what was going to happen to the characters in advance. It has no soccer references at all, but it is even sadder than the Knights were in mid-season.

You will no doubt all be pleased to know that I am now half way through two football books, both of which I'm enjoying immensely, Simon Kuper's Football Against the Enemy and Alex Bellos's Futebol - The Brazilian Way of Life. So more reviews will be coming soon.

Back to the important matter of this post...

The score after Round 20:

Jacob: 34
John: 34
Hamish: 30
Drsimmo: 30
Tony: 29
Dave: 28

My Tips:
Newcastle Jets FC vs Melbourne Victory FC
Newcastle 3:2

Queensland Roar FC vs Sydney FC
Queensland 2:0

New Zealand Knights FC vs Perth Glory FC
Draw 1:1

Central Coast Mariners FC vs Adelaide United FC
Adelaide 1:2

Jacob's Tips:
Newcastle Jets FC vs Melbourne Victory FC
Newcastle 1:0

Queensland Roar FC vs Sydney FC
Sydney 0:1

New Zealand Knights FC vs Perth Glory FC
New Zealand 1:0

Central Coast Mariners FC vs Adelaide United FC
Adelaide 0:1

And to the ineffable infinite, which will here not only never be graven in stone or wood, but will never be named, described, personified or elaborated upon, as any such attempt would make a mockery of infinity, which has no other practical attribute than ineffability, I offer the following prayer:

May we see entertaining A-League games this weekend, may there be good sportsmanship on and off the field, may the best teams win and may there be no serious injuries.

Peace.

A-league Algorithms

Last week I got all excited about the possibilities for the last two rounds with Crunching Possibilities. I got the title for this post from a comment on that post by Wayne, my favourite Central Coast Mariners supporter. Wayne is a gentleman and a poet, and I raise my glass to him and his team in a respectful farewell to their possibility of being in the finals. As Round 20 comes to an end, they are the third to technically lose hope, after New Zealand and Perth.

The other news is that Adelaide has joined Melbourne as a cert for the top four. Even if Central Coast beat them next week, they can realistically finish third at the worst (ok, fourth if Newcastle defeat Melbourne by about five goals).

So we are now down to three teams fighting for two spots. Newcastle will be fighting Melbourne for living breath. If Newcastle lose that match, the rest of the round will be largely academic, except for the question of who will be playing who. But if Melbourne continues its rough run and Newcastle gets the points, it will make the game between Sydney and the Roar at Suncorp stadium a grim struggle indeed.

Just for the drama of it I hope this happens. Sydney under Bad Boy Long Ball Butcher thinks it's the shit, and has hubris coming from every orifice. Queensland has had a highly principled slump and only two weeks ago was number 7. I'll be there. I'm prepared to wish for the risk of losing for the possibility of the highest elation since my first LSD trip in the 80s (I didn't inhale).

Go Newcastle!

YIP YIP YIP YIP YEEEEEEE HARRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what?

Examining the Entrails, Round 20

After a very unpredictable round, the scores so far:
Jacob: 30
John: 30
Tony: 29
Hamish: 29
Drsimmo: 28
Dave: 26

My Tips:
Central Coast Mariners FC vs New Zealand Knights FC
Knights 0:2

Melbourne Victory FC vs Queensland Roar FC
Queensland 0:1

Adelaide United FC vs Sydney FC
Draw 1:1

Perth Glory FC vs Newcastle Jets FC
Newcastle 1:2

Jacob's Tips:
Central Coast Mariners FC vs New Zealand Knights FC
Draw 1:1

Melbourne Victory FC vs Queensland Roar FC
Melbourne 2:0

Adelaide United FC vs Sydney FC
Adelaide 1:0

Perth Glory FC vs Newcastle Jets FC
Newcastle 0:2

And finally:
With hand on heart, Dear Infinite Most Ineffable, please grant all the A-League fans some great football entertainment this weekend, may the best teams win, may there be good sportsmanship on and off the field from both players and fans, and may there be no serious injuries. Amen.

Crunching Possibilities

This is a really extraordinary league. If Perth had succeeded in the shock victory which looked like theirs they would technically still have been in the running for a finals place. This would have been assuming Perth won both of the last two games (against Newcastle and New Zealand - not a ludicrous suggestion) and that Newcastle lost both of theirs (against Perth and Melbourne - also not the steepest odds in the world). Anyway this extraordinary situation was stopped tonight, as with the draw it has officially become impossible for a second team to reach the finals. It had become impossible for New Zealand two weeks ago but, significantly, they are still playing quite a role in determining the finals placements.

With two games to go there are still six teams officially in the run, and there is only one team (Melbourne) technically a cert. Sydney (now second) actually could (I wouldn't put money on it) still be out of the top four. Technically it could happen as early as next round if Adelaide beat Sydney, Newcastle beats Perth, and Queensland beats Melbourne by about 12 or 13 goals. Ok, it's unlikely, but you get the idea. With two rounds to go very little is settled. And in the finals, depending on all the vicissitudes of the game, anyone could actually beat anyone on the day.

All that is certain is that Melbourne are in and that New Zealand and Perth are out. I love it.

Tipping Away Week 19

This blog has always had a personal, indulgent dimension so just for everyone's interest, and completely oblivious to the fortunes of my team, 2007 has started positively and warmly for me. Right now it's even raining, which for a Brisbane burgher is very good indeed. Happy New Year everyone.

Well my first season on the job as a football fanatic has been an emotional rollercoaster. After the Roar's effort last week I've hit a sort of zen plateau of passive observation. Sure McLaren, you need to win all three games. My guess is the Roar will win one of them, but I'm not prepared to call which one. My hope is it will be the one against Sydney in week 21, just for the sake of the home crowd. After that there's just debriefing, analysing, blaming, recruiting etcetera. I am not a Farina fan, at all.

Anyway, here are the scores for the Down Under Football tipping comp so far:
Tony: 29
Hamish: 29
Drsimmo: 27
Jacob: 27
John: 25
Dave: 23

Tony and Dave didn't play unfortunately, which was probably my fault for putting the post up too late, so I've given them a point each. Next year I'll come up with a better routine and system.

A reminder that it is 3 points for a correct score, and 1 point for a correct result with a different score.

My tips:
Adelaide United FC vs Queensland Roar FC
Adelaide 2:1

Newcastle Jets FC vs Central Coast Mariners FC
Draw 2:2

Sydney FC vs New Zealand Knights FC
Sydney 2:1

Perth Glory FC vs Melbourne Victory FC
Melbourne 0:3

Jacob's Tips:
Adelaide United FC vs Queensland Roar FC
Adelaide 3:0

Newcastle Jets FC vs Central Coast Mariners FC
Newcastle 1:0

Sydney FC vs New Zealand Knights FC
Sydney 1:0

Perth Glory FC vs Melbourne Victory FC
Melbourne 0:3