Born Tippy

The best thing about Aussie Rules Football is how completely random it is. You don’t know who the final top four teams will comprise of a month before the first match (like in other sports), modern day football dynasties usually last no longer than three years, and teams that were lousy last year could dominate the competition this year (and vice versa).

Last year Freemantle finished 14th, and this season (this weekend marks the halfway point) they are sitting in second spot. Of course, the whole chaos theory of Football doesn’t always work in your favour, and my own team (the Crows) were picked to make the top four in February, and as of June are sitting in 15th place.

Yep, she’s a little chaotic. Which also means that it makes footy tipping a bit of a bitch. I’m in a competition through work and I’ve been choosing the outcome of matches by checking a sports bet site first, and then choosing the favourite for each match. This is producing only moderate results at my end, and I am currently coming 16th out of 35 punters. A young Chinese lass is winning the competition as of writing. I asked her method of attack, and she told me she looks at the team sheets before each round, and picks the team with “the cutest players”. Random indeed. The competition is quite a meaty one – there are cash prizes for those who finish in the top sixth (first place is $480), I’ll update you on my progress on Sunday night.

This year also marks my first attempt at picking a Dream Team (Fantasy Football), which I was decidedly crap at. I hurriedly picked my team in a player buying splurge ten minutes before I headed off to work on the last day before cut off, and managed to pick seven injured players in the process. Luckily, my late entry meant I ended up in a weak league, and at least half of the other punters are as clueless as I am. The Blue Waffles (my team), are currently 9th on the ladder and a chance to make the finals. Running a Dream Team can be hard work (I refuse to spend more than 15 minutes a week on the team sheet, but I have mates who have confessed to upwards of six hours a week), and more than a little frustrating – especially when that player who was fit on Friday morning, is declared injured an hour before the game Friday night. Last round it was down to the wire, with basically a showdown between the Blue Waffles' last player (Adam McPhee) and the opposition’s last player (Mathew Pavlich), and I had a ten point lead. I ended up losing the round by 2 points – a kick in the nuts considering scores are a couple of thousand large, but I’m only really in the Dream team to learn more about the other teams in the AFL, and who their gun players are.

Holy shit, what the fuck has all of this got to do with the World Cup you ask?

Because the topic of tipping is out there on the table, and it has created the perfect opportunity for me to introduce you to:

This is a competition created by Ozi and myself, and the difference between this and the last few tipping leagues mentioned above, is that you, yes YOU, can join in on the fun.

Click here, and follow the simple instructions to sign up. Then pick the teams you think will win the first round (and subsequent rounds as the Cup progresses). Don’t know anything about Soccer? Who cares, join up anyway. Honduras, Slovenia, Cameroon – half of the World Cup is made up of random-ass countries nobody knows anything about, who gives a fuck, it’s all in the name of fun.

Tipping starts with the first round, and then runs until the Cup final. There are prizes for those who finish in the top three of the tips:

THIRD PRIZE: A framed “Meat Rainbow” picture to hang in your bedroom above your bed.

SECOND PRIZE: An authentic 1903 steam powered dildo, signed by Helen Keller.

FIRST PRIZE: Ozi and I will come round to your house and eat a bowl of crabs. You can’t have any of the crabs, but you can sit and watch us eat them.

So get involved kids, and join the Shoddy Jingezz Tipping Competition.