FALLING DOWN THE LADDER

When it comes to sport, or rather ‘came’ in the sense I’m long past the stage of active participation, I’m quite competitive. Athletics was my first love, mainly 100 and 200 meter sprints, with long jump thrown in if my team were desperate. Training wasn’t my great forte however, leaving it to the last few weeks before a competition before I got myself into gear, realizing by then it was too late to prepare myself to anywhere near my full potential.

I still get into sport of the armchair variety though, staying up bleary eyed through Wimbledon and the Tour de France, but the only thing I watch with weekly interest is how the Western Bulldogs are going in AFL Footy. The Doggies fortunes rise and fall with annoying regularity, having only won one premiership in the club’s history fifty six years ago, and along with their success or failure, go my weekly footy tips.

Now, it’s very difficult to be disloyal and tip against your own club, and I admit to having done it on only a few occasions. You study the stats and check out the opposition each week and go, yeah, they can do it, even if it is against Geelong on their home turf. We’re into the tenth year of our local footy tipping competition which is a bit of fun, about 15-20 of us each year vying for the little trophy and hoping to get 8 out of 8 so we get a Mars bar as reward for our expertise. For the first time, our little comp has registered with the official AFL Footy Tipping competition, so we not only keep track of where each of us are at, we also get to see how we’re going alongside the other countless thousands who have also signed up online.

Haven’t worked out how many are registered, but I do know it’s somewhere around 164,000 or more, and after 5 rounds I’m sitting on 27 points out of a possible 40. Because of last weekend’s shocker of a round with so many upsets I only got 4 points and fell a formidable 4,260 places to arrive at my current position of 33,299 on the tipping ladder. Looooong way behind the leader, but at least it puts me in the top 20%.

Going to be a tight one this Friday night against St Kilda. Well, the Doggies did beat the Saints in the pre-season final, which to me doesn’t really count for anything, and I do remember when I sat in the crowd at the Dome last year they killed us in the final quarter, but this week the Dogs will redeem themselves. I’m sure of it. I think. Yeah, they can do it. The margin? 4 points.

CARN THE DOGS!