CFL update

The season's off to its usual upset-minded start north of the border, with seven of the eight games played so far being won by the visiting team. Each division has one 2-0 team and some 'also-rans' (if you can say that 10% of the season in...). Surprisingly, that's the third-year Ottawa REDBLACKS in the East, defending division champs who were assumed to be a flash in the pan last fall; and VERY surprisingly that's the BC Lions out west, with Calgary and Edmonton already having lost once. The Lions brought back the legendary Wally Buono as head coach - the winningest coach in CFL history by a landslide, and apparently, he still remembers how to coach!

AFL update

After Round 15, with eight weeks of the season still to go, we already have our eight finalists virtually set in stone. In some order, the current lineup of Hawthorn (11-3), GWS (10-4), Geelong (10-4), Sydney (10-4), Adelaide (10-4), Western (10-4), North Melbourne (10-4), and West Coast (9-5) have been the teams in the top eight spots, and with Port Adelaide the only challenger within three games of them at 7-7, there's no reason to think that they won't be the eight teams battling in September.

Here's my projected finishing order, mostly based on how easy the schedules are between now and the first of September:
1 GWS (between 16-18 wins) 18-4
2 Hawthorn (between 15-19 wins) 17-5
3 Adelaide (between 16-18 wins) 17-5
4 Geelong (between 14-18 wins) 17-5
5 Western (between 15-18 wins) 17-5
6 Sydney (between 15-18 wins) 16-6
7 West Coast (between 12-15 wins) 15-7
8 North Melbourne (between 10-16 wins) 14-8

Meanwhile, Port, Melbourne, St. Kilda, Carlton, Collingwood, and Richmond are all battling around 6-8, hoping to be around should West Coast or the Kangaroos fall apart completely. At the bottom, Gold Coast is finally starting to get healthy and may break a few hearts in July and August as they play above their 4-10 record, while Fremantle (3-11), Brisbane and Essendon (both 1-13) long for the season to end.

In the Player of the Year race, Following Football has Geelong's Patrick Dangerfield head and shoulders above the field, with only the Bondi Billionaire, Sydney forward Lance "Buddy" Franklin in his rear view mirror. Sydney teammates Dan Hannebury and Luke Parker are excelling, as are GWS' Heath Shaw, Danger's running mate Joel Selwood, and Melbourne mountain man and fan fave Max Gawn.

AFL update

Still the only obloid game on the planet (not counting rugby), here's an update on the world of Australian Rules Football...

North Melbourne stayed unbeaten at 8-0 with a pair of close wins over eminently beatable teams; many think the Kangaroos are ripe for the taking, though it's unlikely to be the surprising 4-4 Carlton Blues who do that. Not particularly a Blues fan, but it would be fun to see this young team doing it with defense and hustle take down the undefeated leaders! Geelong sits at 7-1, cruising just one game behind, having pulled away from 8th place Adelaide down the stretch. Patrick Dangerfield has been a stellar addition to their midfield, moving them from out of the playoffs last year to a Grand Finals prospect in 2016. The two Opera House teams, Sydney and Greater Western Sydney (GWS), share the 6-2 spots on the ladder in 3rd and 4th, followed by the similarly 6-2 Western Bulldogs and the defenders, the Hawthorn Hawks, trailing on point percentage. Rounding out the top eight are the West Coast Eagles, alone at 5-3, and the Adelaide Crows, ahead of three other teams on percentage at 4-4. If that's not the list for the eight finals teams, I'll eat my non-existent hat! They're far and away the better of the eighteen teams, still to be discussed.

In that 4-4 pack are Carlton, mentioned above, Port Adelaide, winning games against who they should beat; and the Melbourne Demons, who have been building towards this for a couple of years. Are they ready for finals? I think it'll be one year. Below them, the fast falling Gold Coast Suns, losers of five straight, and the disappointing Collingwood Magpies, who nevertheless have OUR interest as they removed their star player, Travis Cloke, several weeks ago, in favor of a rookie from (gasp!) AMERICA named Mason Cox, who has been nothing short of impressive and improving weekly. At 2-6 sit two potentially dangerous teams: Saint Kilda, losers to good teams by close margins, and Richmond, who upset Sydney on a goal after the siren (if you catch a longish kick, called a "mark", you get to dispose of the ball unimpeded - the advantage of a mark! - even if the siren's sounded; since it's unimpeded, it's a chance to kick a goal and win if you're behind by less than a goal beforehand). Some are saying it's the "beginning of something big!" because they ran off late season winning streaks before; I don't think so. The bottom three all look terrible, and for different reasons: Brisbane Lions, which got hammered each of the last three weeks and has the coach on figurative suicide watch; Essendon Bombers, who this year are a ragtag collection of half regulars and half replacement players for reasons we've talked bout more than enough; and the 0-8 Fremantle Dockers, last year's minor premiers, who have finally started looking competitive for large chunks of games (they even led Hawthorn at the half before getting annihilated in the third quarter).

On the player of the year front, we actually have a FORWARD leading for the first time in my memory - usually, the midfielders get all the glory, but after taking the end of the season off to recover from mental health issues, Lance Franklin from Sydney is aiming for 100 goals - and he may make it! It hasn't been done for eight years, since ... well, since he did it at Hawthorn in 2008!
Here's the current leaderboard after eight rounds:

Lance Franklin					SYD		148
Patrick Dangerfield					GEEL		146
Luke Parker					SYD		126
Jarrad Waite					NMK		101
Tom J Lynch					GCS		98
Joel Selwood					GEEL		97
Dan Hannebury					SYD		92
Max Gawn					MEL		92
Lachie Hunter					WB		90
Rory Sloane					ADE		90

Dangerfield has been nothing short of remarkable; Parker and Hannebury are getting Buddy Franklin the ball in record numbers;and it's good to see Max Gawn and Tom J Lynch getting the kind of credit they have deserved for awhile now!

As for my "tipping" record? Well, I'm doing about normal for me right now; I'm sitting in the top 1000 or so consistently (out of 188,000 bettors at the moment), and within the GWS campaign, I've been in the top ten most of the season and currently sit eighth again (I was up to second at one point...). 

Update: North of the Equator

>>> What's the over/under on Johnny Manziel? I mean, in terms of him completely falling off the cliff of sanity, dying, whatever.

>>>  So, were the Rams and Eagles really the teams most in need of QBs? Denver made a good pick in Paxton Lynch - he'll play well right away. Whether Dallas' pick of OSU's Ezekiel Elliot at the #4 slot pays off or not, it's definitely a Jerry Jones pick! But at least it's not a Greg Hardy reach...

>>> Who's "rebuilding", and who's making their push for 2016? You let us know what you think!

>>> What Tennessee and Tampa are trying to do to protect their young prodigy quarterbacks is promising on both fronts. Whether it bears fruit remains to be seen...

>>> Baltimore claims they pulled the plug on drafting Jeremiah Tunsil because of the "supposedly hacked" social media post with a bong. Right or wrong move?

 

All-in? Or "rebuilding"?

Here's a great article by the always excellent Damian Barrett of afl.com.au that gives superb thumbnail sketches of all eighteen teams in the Australian Football League in 2016.

ALL IN, ALL THE TIME? Geelong and Sydney, maybe Hawthorn and West Coast in recent years.

ALL IN FOR RIGHT NOW, ANYWAY? North Melbourne, Adelaide, and Western are all in this year, at least. The NM Kangaroos, at least, are working with a pretty good number of thirty-somethings (including the immortal Brent Harvey), so they're in it for a pretty short window...possibly.

BUILDING TOWARDS THE NOW...OR THE NEAR NOW? Greater Western Sydney has gone 18th, 18th, 16th, and 11th in their four years...and suddenly, they MAY (repeat: may) be already in their championship window. If so? They could be there a while.

BUILDING FOR THE (UN)FORSEEABLE FUTURE? Barrett has no mercy for the teams which use the excuse of "rebuilding" as a euphemism for "we don't have the horses to compete", regardless of whether that's their fault or not. (His point, of course, is that it usually IS.) That's Brisbane and Carlton (not much choice in either case, but it's going to be a while...), Melbourne and St. Kilda (who each started a couple of years ago, and darned if they aren't making progress!), and (according to the team suddenly) Collingwood, the "Yankees/Man U" of the AFL, who basically screwed up the present and decided to call it a rebuilding project. Yeah...

BUILT FOR THE NOW OR RECENT PAST, BUT... Woe to Fremantle (the most sudden collapse around), Port Adelaide and Richmond (the Tigers edged into second by losing to the Power last week), and ... well, that's three too many. These three are in trouble, with no real easy way out.

EXTRANEOUS CASES: There's Essendon, who has the WADA drug suspensions over its head. They could be in any of the above categories next year...we'll have to wait and see. And Gold Coast was supposed to be following GWS' trajectory a year in advance, except for scandals, injury plagues, and financial brou-ha-has. Could go any which way, depending on how the terrible trinity goes.

So, who fits which category in the NFL? The CFL? Let us know what you think!

Six games in, and we're finished already...

Not literally finished, but seemingly. The Australian Footy season is barely one-quarter finished, and there's four months to go before finals, but I would wager something significant that the current top 8 will be there at the end as well, barring major injury issues debilitating one of the teams (Western is the most vulnerable at the moment, having already lost three key starters):

1. North Melbourne Kangaroos  (6-0, 125%), beating Western by two goals Friday night.
2. Geelong Cats (5-1, 174%), after a 120 thrashing of Gold Coast Saturday.
3. Sydney Swans (5-1, 144%), challenged this week by an up and coming Brisbane Lions team.
4. Western Bulldogs (4-2, 156%), losers to the Roos and by three to the three-time champs.
5. GWS Giants (4-2, 141%), who stamped their certificate with a 75-pt annihilation of Hawthorn!
6. West Coast Eagles (4-2, 130%), but they have to learn to beat someone in the top 8 to threaten.
7. Adelaide Crows (4-2, 122%), easy winners over pitiful Fremantle this week.
8. Hawthorn Hawks (4-2, 92%), whipped by the newbies this week but still the champ.

The next four teams are the bridesmaids, with potential but not the firepower yet to consistently challenge any of the teams above them. Sometimes they can win...but not often enough to make finals:

9. Melbourne Demons (3-3, 102%), erratic but growing in capability.
10. Gold Coast Suns (3-3, 95%), injury bitten AGAIN, third year in a row.
11. Port Adelaide Power (3-3, 90%), false hope - three wins against whipping boys.
12. St. Kilda Saints (2-4, 89%), erratic but improving quickly!

Finally, there's the bottom six - someone here may leap into the tier above this (Brisbane?), but they have NO shot at finals in 2016:

13. Collingwood Magpies (2-4, 79%), beating Essendon isn't a badge of honor, guys!
14. Carlton Blues (2-4, 74%), see previous comment.
15. Richmond Tigers (1-5, 75%), expected to be 5-1 after being in finals three years in a row...
16. Brisbane Lions (1-5, 71%), the most promising of the six; took Sydney within a goal last night.
17. Essendon Bombers (1-5, 62%), expected NOTHING this year, with half the team banished!
18. Fremantle Dockers (0-6, 69%), an unreal fall from grace for a team that WON the home-and-away season last year! They've already matched their loss total for all of 2015! At season's beginning, the game this coming weekend where GWS comes to Fremantle was about a 26 point Docker favorite; now, it's 26 points to GWS' favor. They've gotten here legitimately, too: they look like a last place team on the field.

Update: South of the Equator

It's five rounds into the home-and-away season for the AFL, and the North Melbourne Kangaroos are the sole remaining undefeated team on the ladder. Friday night (4 am Friday morning, Idaho time), they have to face the second place Western Bulldogs, on their mutual home grounds at Etihad Stadium (the only covered, artificial turf stadium in the league), where the Doggies can run like mad and usually race past their opponents (my wager is that there's going to be zero loss-less teams in three days). Should be as great a game as last Friday night's classic, where Hawthorn won their third straight three-point victory, 112-109 over the Adelaide Crows in a thriller.

Right now, it looks like there are seven teams who are (barring disaster) going to be the definitive favorites to make the eight-team finals: the four named above, plus the Sydney Swans, West Coast Eagles, and the Geelong Cats. The eighth spot, were I a betting man, will come down to a race between the two newest clubs, the Gold Coast Suns and the Greater Western Sydney (GWS) Giants, neither of whom have ever made finals. (And GWS looks much more likely, with the injuries Gold Coast is piling up again after last year's injury debacle!) That would be an AMAZING finals month of September! The tenth possibility, surprisingly, is Melbourne's Demons, who haven't sniffed playoffs in a decade, but are 3-2 and looking strong - not as strong as the above teams, but...you know, it's possible. Their rating gain of 12.6 ELO points is second in the competition, behind only GWS's ridiculous 23.4.

On the other end of the scale, in a phenomenal turn, the only winless team in the AFL is last year's top seeded team, the Fremantle Dockers, with essentially the same personnel. Now, they're starting to rack up some ailing players as well, but that's not the excuse for losing five straight, including a four point loss Sunday to the other (previously) winless team, the Carlton Blues, who were expected to be poor this year in a rebuilding effort. The five teams who have fallen on hard times this season are Fremantle (0-5), Essendon (1-4 - expected, having lost 12 top players in the WADA drug ruling), Collingwood (2-3, with wins over Essendon this weekend and a lucky win by 2 over a weak team), Richmond (1-4) and Port Adelaide (2-3), two teams expected to play finals but who play each other this weekend to see which one's falling faster...

Why?

If you're Johnny Manziel, and you're trying to get a job in the NFL, and the word on the street is you can't get your head out of your tail long enough to actually work at your job, why are you hanging out with someone like Josh Gordon, who just got picked up AGAIN for drugs and cannot ever APPEAL for reinstatement into the league for the rest of the year?

And why, if you're Von Miller, do you even consider letting Manziel room with you at this point?

And why do I care at this point? Is it the car crash theory - like Lindsay Lohan or Kim Kardashian or Mike Tyson, you just can't look away at some point of ludicrosity (a word I just made up)? When he gets a JOB, then I can justify it...

Aussie Rules update

Hello from down under! As we get ready to tip Week 4 of the AFL footy season, here's where the teams stand after three games:

3 and 0) Scoreboard!... Gold Coast Suns (the big surprise, but then they've had an easy schedule so far), Sydney Swans (looked strong three weeks in a row - Luke Parker leads our Player of the Year voting, and Buddy Franklin is scoring like Steph Curry again!), and North Melbourne Kangaroos (first time they won game ONE, let alone the first three, in ten years! But they're strong enough to have earned those wins).

2 and 1) A series of teams who are either imperfect or ran into a bad week or a better team or... Hawthorn Hawks (no surprise - tough wins against West Coast and the Bulldogs earn them their cred back), West Coast Eagles and Western Bulldogs (been great and each lost a tough game to the Hawks), Geelong Cats (looked great all season; GWS bullied them in a bad week), Adelaide and Port Adelaide (the Cats are the better of the two, but Port's had two easy games besides getting whooped by their cross-town rivals).

1 and 2) Teams which have their teeth clenched right now... GWS Giants (an up and down team), Melbourne Demons (ditto - no bad losses), Collingwood Magpies and Richmond Tigers (weaker than expected), Essendon Bombers (upset the Dees somehow in week 2), and St. Kilda Saints (upended the Pies in Nick Riewoldt's 300th game!).

0 and 3) Exactly where they deserve to be, although all show signs of a pulse, at least...Brisbane Lions (don't expect more than a few wins), Carlton Blues (but number one draft pick Jacob Weitering is the real deal), and last year's minor premiers, the Fremantle Dockers (who don't seem to understand that you have to score more than five goals a game to win in this league. The walls may be caving in if they can't scare up a win soon...)

So, this week, some easy calls: West Coast over Richmond Friday; Geelong over Essendon, Hawthorn over St. Kilda, Gold Coast over Brisbane (but in a rivalry? Never know...), Western over Carlton, and on Sunday expect North Melbourne to add to Fremantle's misery. As for the question mark games, I'm thinking GWS gets over the line against Port Adelaide, I'll take the Adelaide Crows to upset Sydney, and by flipping a coin I've got Melbourne nipping Collingwood (they show more positive signs).

Right now, my record is 20-7; I'm sitting in the top 10% of tipsters in the AFL competition, and there's a long way to go...

Aussie Footy update

The first weekend went down with every home team winning, even the three games that many tipped the other way. The BIG winners were the Sydney Swans (annihilated a listless Collingwood team that had looked good in pre-season), Western Bulldogs, who somehow made the reigning minor premier Fremantle club look like beginners, shutting them out entirely until halfway through the second quarter; and Geelong, who defeated the three-time defenders Hawthorn with room to spare. The West Coast Eagles looked good, scoring 160+ against Brisbane (who hit 100 themselves), Gold Coast against Essendon (but everyone will look good against the Dons this year), and the other winners and frankly some of the losers: Richmond, Melbourne, Port Adelaide and North Melbourne all won; but Carlton and St. Kilda both looked better than expected in their losses, and GWS and Adelaide came close to winning their matches.

The top players of the first week, according to our combination of all sorts of different rating and voting systems in Aussie land, were these six men:
1. Robbie Grey (Port Adelaide) - 35 pts
1. Josh Kennedy (West Coast) - 35 pts
1. Nic Naitanui (West Coast) - 35 pts
1. Luke Parker (Sydney) - 35 pts
5. Patrick Dangerfield (Geelong) - 34 pts
6. Jake Stringer (Western) - 30 pts

In the coming week, every road team last week is a home team this week, so we've got nine 1-0 teams travelling to nine 0-1 teams (understanding some of them share the MCG or some other stadium, so "travel" is sometimes figurative):

Richmond @ Collingwood (take Richmond +7.5)
Port Adelaide @ Adelaide (they share a stadium, and they're about equally good)
Melbourne @ Essendon (bet against Essendon every game this year until they become respectable.)
North Melbourne @ Brisbane (Kangaroos should win)
Western Bulldogs @ St. Kilda (in Jack Riewoldt's 300th game with the Saints)
Gold Coast @ Fremantle (hard to believe that Freo won't come back and win)
Geelong @ GWS (Geelong should win, but GWS needs to make a good showing)
West Coast @ Hawthorn (rematch of the Grand Final; most think WC will get a measure of revenge)
Sydney @ Carlton (again, hard to see even an improved Carlton making a game of this).