sidelined

Lote Tuqiri has contacted Wallabies selector Michael O’Connor to apologise for his act of stupidity at a NSW Waratahs drinking session - but this time he left his phone off loudspeaker.
Tuqiri was a goose but isn’t it O’Connor who should be apologising?
What on earth is a selector doing trash talking a player to [...]

Now that the round has finished, over the fold is my NSW State of Origin team. The official squad will be released tomorrow (Tuesday) so we will see if the selectors read Sidelined. Jamie Lyon is facing the judiciary and may not play. Which saves us the embarrasment of selecting him. His easy ride into [...]

Contained in a a nice feature piece on Andre Agassi in today’s Oz was this quote.
I got to play with three generations, really,” Agassi says. “Maybe more depending on how you count them. I got to see the game from the McEnroe-Connors era to the Lendls, Beckers, Edbergs, Wilanders, to me and Pete and Courier [...]

Well, here we are, in the middle of a most even competition. That is, unless you are West Coast, who are much more even than other people, or Port, who are quite a bit more even than most. Or the hapless Tigers or Demons, of whom the less is said the better.
Having decided that tipping [...]

Finally the Storm have succumbed which leaves no team unbeaten and no team unbeatable in this years competition. A bit of a log jam is developing in the middle of the table with 7 teams on 8 points. The next few weeks will some some intense games as teams make sure they stay in touch [...]

The moral of the story is that tipping home games does not work. Witness the results:
(70%) Saints (18.17 125) Blues (11.16 82) (30%)
(78%) Bombers (15.6 96) Hawks (20.11 131) (22%)
(93%) Eagles (10.17 77) Bulldogs (9.8 62) (7%)
(18%) Kangaroos (16.15 111) Swans (14.11 95) (82%)
(84%) Crows (9.8 62) Magpies (11.20 86) (16%)
(74%) Lions (17.18 120) Dockers [...]

A post by the Divine Miss Crazybrave Zoe reminded me that I’ve been intending to update Sideliners about my son’s burgeoning soccer career. Particularly as he’s got a shiner to show for yesterday’s efforts (and no, it was not from me whacking him - he copped a ball in the face off a kids’ boot. [...]

It has been a busy week. So busy in fact all I all saw of the City/Country game was the first few minutes. So I got nothing on that game. You can read the reports here and here.
But I got something on round 8. Analysis and tips for the weekend. Hopefully no more teams [...]

So, are Aussie sides getting harshly penalised, their players buried beneath mountains of red and yellow cards while other Asian sides skip past unmolested?
Well… it’s kinda inconclusive.
The ACL stats page has a list of every player with cards to his name, unhelpfully arranged in alphabetical order, and in a fit of nerd-dom I’ve had a [...]

OK, it’s been a shite week in what passes for my personal life. Nothing particularly bad, just lots of dark and dreary thoughts. So I really can’t be bothered psychoanalysing football teams and have opted to conduct a home game experiment, which means ticking every team on the left hand side:
(Tip ratio / Price) Home [...]