Tipping is Open
Tipping for Round 10 is open. Dane, Wayne and Peter, I hope you come back. Well done Neil for getting close to Mike, who is struggling without the performance enhancing drugs.
Here's a few widely held assumptions that could use challenging, or at least watching.
1) The Crawford Report cleaned up soccer in Australia. Did it? Or did it just replace the system of regional football mafias with a single football mafia?
2) Lowy was the magic man for the job. See assumption 1.
3) FOX is football's media saviour. FOX has contained and monopolised professional soccer such that the elite game is only for the elite audience. I know I've said this before but it is NOT in FOX's interests for the game to grow. They depend on an inherently archaic technology, and their business plan depends on a wide range of marginally followed sporting events, big enough to entice their respective audiences to subscribe, given they have no choice, but small enough to be unviable to a free-to-air option. Any sporting code that is big enough to be viable for a commercial free-to-air bid is a THREAT to FOX.
Maybe I'm wrong. I'm still far too new to all this to get cocky, but I reckon these three assumptions are all looking very shaky.
Meanwhile, for me, soccer is so much fun, a window to the infinite in humanity, society and modern history, and a brilliant way to be a father and a community minded person. But the A-League? Tip on ladies and gentleman, but in truth I'm slowly becoming disillusioned with an elitist, top-down contrivance.
Go the Roar. Go the Red-Eye Pirates. And go the West End Terrors. May all the games be FUN and free of serious injuries.
Here's a few widely held assumptions that could use challenging, or at least watching.
1) The Crawford Report cleaned up soccer in Australia. Did it? Or did it just replace the system of regional football mafias with a single football mafia?
2) Lowy was the magic man for the job. See assumption 1.
3) FOX is football's media saviour. FOX has contained and monopolised professional soccer such that the elite game is only for the elite audience. I know I've said this before but it is NOT in FOX's interests for the game to grow. They depend on an inherently archaic technology, and their business plan depends on a wide range of marginally followed sporting events, big enough to entice their respective audiences to subscribe, given they have no choice, but small enough to be unviable to a free-to-air option. Any sporting code that is big enough to be viable for a commercial free-to-air bid is a THREAT to FOX.
Maybe I'm wrong. I'm still far too new to all this to get cocky, but I reckon these three assumptions are all looking very shaky.
Meanwhile, for me, soccer is so much fun, a window to the infinite in humanity, society and modern history, and a brilliant way to be a father and a community minded person. But the A-League? Tip on ladies and gentleman, but in truth I'm slowly becoming disillusioned with an elitist, top-down contrivance.
Go the Roar. Go the Red-Eye Pirates. And go the West End Terrors. May all the games be FUN and free of serious injuries.
posted by Hamish Alcorn at 6:51 am
16 Comments:
Hey Hamish,
My tips for another week:
Melbourne 2
Newcastle 0
Queensland 3
Perth 1
Sydney 0
Central Coast 3
Adelaide 2
Wellington 1
Very sad to see Wellington dropping off in the past few weeks. Here's to them reclaiming some of their good form.
agreed - this `new soccer` isn`t pure goodness, and `old soccer` wasn`t all bad. there may come a time when lowy becomes a liability. i hope he has the sense to know when to go.
thanks for the reminders about the grassroots. it is so easy to just focus on the professionals.
Hamish, havent left ya mate, just forgot to send em in last week. Have to agree with you about all the intrigue of this week, and as a "returner" post NSL I too have no time for the political machinations of it all, suffice to say I want the FFA to make the trains run on time and that is about all. Today's saviour is tomorrow's dictator, but its still only a little game that goes some way to redirect our own obsessions. Playing sport and watching it are two very different beasts. Chin up though, our little league (for that is what it is) will hopefully stay this size or thereabouts, pull enough to stay a niche that FOX (or perhaps the broadband version in the future) serves, safe in the knowledge that people like you and me(if my knees hold out) will continue to play and watch the game, and pass that love on. Lowy needs to leave, but its better all the inevidable "corruption" that inevibably rsults from competition at least stays close to home. Its not a cancer yet - but when it is, I'm on the first bus outta here with you mate.
Tips:
Melbourne 2
Newcastle 1
Queensland 2
Perth 1
Sydney 1
Central Coast 4
Adelaide 2
Wellington 1
melb 0 v new 1
Roar 1 v Perth 0
Syd 0 v CCM 4
Adel 2 v Wellies 2
Melb Victory 2 Newcastle Jets 2
Roar 2 Perth 1
Sydney 2 CCM 1
Adelaide 3 Wellington 1
goals goals goals...Roar rock Hamish......
Home game. Home game. Interesting to see the Roar have to pay for every ticket under 15000. Home game. Home game. YAY
Melbourne 3 Newcastle 1
Roar 2 Perth 0
Sydney 1 Mariners 3
Adelaide 2 Wellington 1
My tips for this week:
Victory 2 Jets 1
Roar 2 Glory 2
Sydney 1 CCM 2
Adelaide 2 Phoenix 1
Vics 0 Jets 2
The Newcastle bogey comes back to bite the Victory. Despite their protestations, Melbourne have been pretty lucky this year, and have had a total of about 60 minutes of convincing football all season. The Jets are looking good all over the park and should crash the Vics' party.
Roar 4 Glory 0
Based on their first half-hour against Melbourne last week, the Glory boys could be on a real hiding here against a Roar side keen to impress at home. To be fair to them, they stuck the course against the Vics, but were never really in the hunt. This could however be a real 'banana skin' game for Qld, and they'll need to be wary.
Sydney 1 Mariners 1
How often do teams win first-up after getting a new coach? Pretty regularly it seems, so Sydney will be a real danger to the Gosford outfit in this one. By the same token, they still have only barely scraped together a fit (or in the case of Juninho, half-fit) squad. I expect a much better performance from Drama FC, but not good enough to take all three from the ladder leaders.
Reds 2 Phoenix 1
Wellington have slid fairly dramatically in the past few weeks, although player absences from a variety of causes have hurt their chances. Adelaide have the taste for winning, and it's hard to see them letting this one get away.
Best of luck to all.
Well, after the upheavals of this week at my little club (Hakoah II) I've hardly been thinking about the others, but here goes...
MV 2-1 NUJ
QR 2-1 PG
SFC 2-2 CCM
AU 3-0 WP
Here are my tips for the upcoming matches:
Melbourne 2 Newcastle 1
Queensland Roar 2 Perth Glory 0
Sydney 0 Central Coast 1
Adelaide 2 Wellington 0
I haven't left either mate. I was standing at the Sydney game and it got to half time when I turned to my mate and went "Shit! My tips!" I don't know what jogged my memory but I guess it doesn't really matter, to be honest I would have gone pretty bad ;)
Here are this weeks:
MV 2-1 NUJ
QR 3-0 PG
SFC 3-2 CCM
AU 3-1 WP
what a week in syd;
MV 1 v NJ 2
QR 1 v PG 0
SFC 1 v CCM 0
AU 2 v WP 1
OK, the last two...
Sydney 0, Central Coast 2 (not that I´d want to see CCM win next week).
Adelaide 1 Phoenix 2
Good call from Dave re Jets.
And Roar players did score 4, but not all for us.
Having finally slowed down to read blog posts all over the place from last week I've finally read yours, and I suspect that the single football mafia is what we have now.
It's very much Lowy's league and sport. In what other country would someone who is such a disgrace have been put as an assistant to the national team? And that Kosmina is now the coach of the team that Lowy still has interests in stinks big time.
The only thing that the A-League has on the old NSL is a lack of ethnic ties. Otherwise we seem to be looking at the same old piece of rubbish.
I'm looking forward to the day that Melbourne has a 2nd team. The only one who isn't is Geoff Lord, who must be loving the monopoly. A second team would give current Victorian football supporters a choice, which is something that we don't have at the moment. All the way back to season one we were calling for Merrick's head. But there was nothing that we could do but keep attending matches, we couldn't and currently can't get our football fix any other way.
Well after laying down standards of accountability last week I of course immediately dropped the ball and failed to put Jacob's and my tips out before the games (except on the table itself). (My excuse is that I got stuck in John Marsden's Tomorrow When the War Began series and read the seven books in five days - brilliant teen lit.) Fortunately we didn't do too well so I'm safe from accusations of fiddling.
Meanwhile Cecilia gave her first two tips by text. If you want to get my mobile number to do this, you'll have to email me first. If you give me your mobile I'll even text you a reminder if you've forgotten to tip.
Anyway, for the sake of permanent record:
Cecilia's opening two tips:
Melbourne vs Newcastle:
Melbourne 3:1
Queensland vs Perth:
Roar 3:1
Jacob's tips:
Melbourne vs Newcastle:
Newcastle 1:2
Queensland vs Perth:
Roar 20:0
Sydney vs Central Coast:
Mariners 1:3
Adelaide vs Wellington:
United 2:0
My tips:
Melbourne vs Newcastle
Draw 1:1
Queensland vs Perth:
Queensland 2:0
Sydney vs Central Coast:
Mariners 1:3
Adelaide vs Wellington:
Adelaide 2:1
Great night of drama at Suncorp on Saturday night. Disappointing ending of course but it was hard not to be happy about such an eventful game, well living up to the "90 Emotions" slogan.
Even without his goal Marcinho had a good game, and he's been promoted in my mind, as has Lynch, from 'dud' to 'might be convinced'. Reinaldo had a poor game, even in the sense that I have previously talked about. Griffin is too slow. Moore had a cracker despite his home goal, as did Reddy. We missed Matty, and I reckon we'll miss Tiatto too if he's out for a bit.
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