Big Bash League Ladder Prediction

I really didn't care about BBL1 and BBL2, but then BBL3 was on free-to-air television every night for six weeks, and suddenly I found it very interesting. There is probably a lesson there for sport leagues on the margins of mainstream public consiousness – I'm looking at you A-League and Super Rugby.

By BBL4 I'd even decided which of the artificial Sydney-based franchises with ugly uniforms I'd support – go Sixers!

Now I'm so comfortably on the bandwagon I'm going to try and predict the final ladder positions of each team in BBL5, which seems absurd given the unpredictability of Twenty20 cricket and the short length of the regular season. But it can't go worse than my NRL predictions.

Top Five Things I Wrote Before This Blog Existed

I launched this blog in January 2015, instantly capturing the hearts, minds and clicks of dozens of friends with my captivating prose they could readily skim through in seconds, yet claim to have read in full, so they seemed politely interested in my new hobby.

It's now hard to remember a time when I wasn't a successful and influential voice in the blogosphere, shaping modern opinion and events on a myriad of important subjects, but if I cast my mind back eleven or twelve months, that time does in fact exist as a hazy memory.

And it turns out, I still wrote things!

They are on Facebook, and from probably hundreds of status updates, I've managed to identify five that are okay, I guess.

Here they are in reverse chronological order:

All The Hats I've Eaten

The 2016 SMH Good Food Guide was released a few weeks back.

When I tallied it up, I've been to twenty of the current hatted restaurants.

Here's a few words on all of them:

Ranking All The Current Australian Cricketers

Following Australian cricket used to be relatively simple. Your typical summer would have 12 or 13 Test cricketers, and maybe an additional half dozen cricketers for the one dayers, either to replace the Test specialists or as cover to give players a rest. There were a maximum twenty players in the mix at any one time.

It's not so simple now. There are now three cricket formats and I reckon across them Australia now typically uses 30 to 40 cricketers over a summer. There are quite possibly more current cricketers that have represented Australia - or at least made a national squad - than there are mere state players.

You've changed, man!

So here's a helpful guide to literally all of them. Number 81 is my favourite.

Infrequently Asked Questions About Twins

A few months ago, a Facebook post went viral with responses to frequently asked questions directed towards parents of twins.

I wish I came up with it.

The Latest and Best Review of the NRL Grand Final You Will Ever Read

It was the best of the times, it was the Thurst of times... the Grand Final was a phenomenal game. It was close, fast, both teams prepared to attack, both teams defending brilliantly, with an ending you couldn't script. The NRL even managed to deliver decent pre-game entertainment!

The match itself has been recapped and reviewed at great length, so I won't be doing that. My favourite summary is this one. Instead, here are four things you may not have read elsewhere:

Official NRL Grub Rankings 2015 - Part Three

You can read part one here and part two here. They cover positions 43 to 12. This is now the top eleven grubs.

Official NRL Grub Rankings 2015 - Part Two

You can read part one here. It starts the countdown from 43, and gets through the first 16 players, so we commence part two at #27. Part one also explains some of the basic rationale behind the rankings.

Official NRL Grub Rankings 2015 - Part One

“Grub” is a word I never hear or read, unless hearing or reading discussions about rugby league players, where it is perhaps the most overused term ever.

A player can be accused of being a grub for any number of reasons, ranging from dirty play bordering on criminality through to simply playing for the wrong (grubby) team. When a player is labelled a grub with evidence cited to support the charge of being the grubbiest player who ever grubbed, if you disagree, the most common defense is to exclaim “it's not his go!”. This normally leads to a stalemate in the debate and no clear determination of the player’s grubbiness.

It is a complicated issue.

This is why I have developed the official NRL Grub Rankings. I initially included forty NRL players often accused of grubdom, but have added another three that made late claims in the months since I started this project.

Expected Value in Rugby League

OR:

A Draft PhD Idea for Someone a Who Just Wants To Watch Footy

The Rugby World Cup

The rugby union World Cup is almost here.

One thing we can all agree on is it's not some farcical joke like that silly rugby league world cup. This is the third biggest sporting event in the world - well, according to the International Rugby Board's own commissioned reports, and no other credible source or basic common sense. Plus loads of countries play and can win. In its history, the 20 finals spots have been taken up a massive 25 teams, of which four have won and five have made the final, way more than the three winners and four finalists in the rugby league world joke!

Most importantly, these are real national teams playing for real national pride. Not a bunch of Aussie and Kiwi mercenaries making up numbers.

So let's look at each team alphabetically and some of their most patriotic players:

Tantrums

These tantrums all happened in the last seven days.

NRL Ladder Prediction - Revisited

At the start of the season, I tried to predict the ladder. I got it mostly wrong. Here's the final scorecard...

Hot Sport Newz~! 24/08/15

In this edition:

• Five things about Jarryd Hayne in the NFL

That Time I Lived In Paddington

This morning I saw The Most Newtown Man Ever.

He was tall and skinny and his hair was in a man-bun. He wore aviator sunglasses even though we were on a train travelling underground. He had a t-shirt advertising Young Henry's beer, He probably had a dodgy tattoo sleeve, but I couldn't see through his cardigan. Oh, and he had a rolled-up yoga mat sticking out of the top of his backpack.

It reminded me of the time I saw The Most Paddington Couple Ever. I then wondered if I could stretch both these profiles into a story, like Humans of New York, but without the pictures and in Sydney.

Then later this morning I read a review for The Bellevue Restaurant, situated in the Bellevue Hotel in Paddington, and decided on something else.

So this is all about that time I lived in Paddington...

Hot Sport Newz~! 10/08/15

In this edition:

• The NRL free-to-air broadcast deal - what does it mean?

Things I Don't Understand, Part Four

You can read part one here, part two here, and part three here.

Sport and Racism in Australia

I'm going to add my voice to the Adam Goodes "debate". I say "debate" in "inverted commas" because it shouldn't really be a debate.

This shit is racist.

Hot Sport Newz~! 26/07/15

In this edition:

• Blame It On The Nicky
• FIFA PUNK'D
• Sport for Nerds
• The Intolerant Hulk

NRL Season Schedule Proposal

An article in Monday's SMH by Brad Walter highlighted an interesting problem the NRL currently has around scheduling - State of Origin is very successful commercially, but it's success is now detracting from the NRL competition that should be the foundation of professional rugby league in Australia.

The iiNet Story

When we moved just before Christmas, we decided to shop around for home internet. We elected to sign a 24 month contract with iiNet.

This was a terrible error of judgment.

The following is a full chronological account of my experiences with iiNet. It is long, but this is legitimately the minimum amount of words I could use to document every moment of incompetence.

iiNet - a #2. Finally, truth in advertising.

Cold Sport Newz~!

Cold rather than hot because some of this is old newz~!

This edition features a selection of stuff I wanted to rant about over the last few months but it was too hard due to experiencing "technical difficulties" still not fully resolved.

(There will be a story about that debacle when it is fully resolved. Unless something radically changes, it's not going to be very favourable to companies represented in advertising by smug Irish backpackers wearing bad sweaters.)

Let's get to the newz~!

Eurovision 2015: My Votes Are In!

For the first time in years, I watched Eurovision. Not live, the replay. I'm not getting up at 5:00am on a Sunday. I like to sleep in. So I get up at 5:40am when one of my children starts screaming, bring them into our bed, get headbutted and kicked for the next two hours, before getting up before you do anyway. A nice lie in to start a lazy Sunday.

Anyway, I watched Eurovision and they forgot to count my votes!

I greeted Vienna with "Hello, Lounge Room calling, here are the votes from Rob..." and got the disconnected tone.

So here are my points to be added on:

One of the Best Days of the Year

Tomorrow the NSW State of Origin team is named. I think it is one of the best days in the year. 

Things I Don't Understand, Part Three

This one is all about technology.

Yes, I am saying I don't understand the main driving force for the advancement of humanity over at least the last few centuries. It's no big deal.

The following is a selection of my problems with technology:

Things I Don't Understand, Part Two

Here are some more things I don't understand...

ABC4Kids - Official Power Rankings

As a parent, you start with strong principles, and gradually erode them. So on watching TV, we were of the view it would be none to minimal. Then it was a small amount each day as part of a routine. Now it's whenever they are hysterically upset, fighting each other, hysterically upset because they're fighting each other, or we need to do something uninterrupted - it can be anything from 30 minutes to all the time, daily.

So I've watched a lot of ABC4Kids and feel confident in the accuracy of the following power rankings. 

You can feel confident in the ratings too, knowing this is a scientific endeavour with a rigorous mathematical scoring system. 

I used three equally-weighted criteria, on a 0-3 scale.

Places I've Eaten, Part One

I really enjoy food. I'm one of those people that talks about food texture and complimentary flavours and so on. I often pick places to do various things based on what is available to eat nearby. I can't leave anything on my plate even if full, because there are starving kids in Africa and also because of gluttony. I understand quinoa. I pretend to understand kale.

So I'm one of those people. A wanker foodie.

Once you have children you don't get out as much, but recently I've had a couple of interesting dining experiences that I thought I'd share. I probably have enough material for a dozen articles like this.

NRL Ladder Prediction

With the NRL season just under 24 hours away from kicking off, I thought I'd make an attempt at predicting the final ladder.

Review: A Day at Taronga Zoo

On Saturday we went to the zoo. It was the kids second zoo experience, but first with us (the grandparents got in early).

Did they enjoy it?

Inconclusive.

Things I Don't Understand, Part One

Here are a few things I don't understand...

Hot Cricket Newz~! 11/02/15

In this edition:

• Fearless World Cup Prediction
• Around the Grounds
• The Bad Luck of the Irish
• Bats and Balls and Ropes

Steelers Memories

The List: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

I wrote this many years ago, thought I'd update slightly and post here:

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES, is my favourite console. I played far more games in the next gen, and I acknowledge current consoles are graphically amazing, but it’s the SNES that represents my childhood. These are my ten most memorable SNES games, in a particular order. Alphabetical order!

Hot Sport Newz~! 31/01/15

In this edition:

• Socceroos and the Asian Cup
• A Political Diversion
• Superb Owl Hot Tip!

Hot Sport Newz~! 22/01/15

In this edition:

• Anyone for Tennis?
• Words from Warner
• Deflategate