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Footy Tipping: The Eight Golden Rules |
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Written by His Bobness
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Tuesday, 13 February 2007 |
 Frustrated at his sudden inability to pick Silverfern winners, a close friend has comprehensively polled successful forecasters in Australia and New Zealand for valuable insights on how to make accurate predictions.
So don’t despair at your pitiful tipping this early in the season. Pull up your comfy chair and listen as I share these pearls of wisdom.
As is often the case in life, the best advice often centres on what NOT to do (like don’t crow about your mastery of any skill, because as soon as you do so, you will find that you suddenly become quite shit at it).
So let’s begin.
The very first rule of Super 14 tipping is “Never Tip The Chiefs”, especially at home. No matter how strong the team looks on paper, you can bet your bottom drawer dollar that they will turn into retards on the field.
Before wasting your tip on The Chiefs you must first consider that the presence in its backline of that King of The Doofuses, Stephen Donald, means that the opposing team is starting with 16 men.
The second rule is “Never Back the Stormers”, especially at home. Filled with big name loose forwards like Burger and Van Niekerk and Watson, the Stormers are like thunder without rain – full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. The empty stadium at Newlands should give you an indication of how much faith their hometown fans have in them.
Against the Western Force at Capetown this last weekend, the banners urged Stormers captain Luke Watson to “Use the Force, Luke”. But it seems that Luke read this as “Lose to the Force, Luke.” And like a good Jedi, he obeyed.
The third rule of tipping is to “Never Believe the Waratahs’ Hype”. After umpteen seasons in which hysterical marketing has run ahead of on-field execution, you think we would have cottoned onto this.
But, alas, no. Judging by the excremental play of the Waratahs against a clueless Lions side (you can upgrade these guys from being mere Cats, but they’re still moggies) and then against the half-decent Sharks in Durban, this will be another season in which hype and hoopla about the “‘Tahs” will be in inverse proportion to results
A fourth rule of tipping: “Never Under-Estimate the Capacity of Petty Officialdom and Stupid Refereeing to Skew the Results of Games”. The Queensland Reds (they were in white) nearly upset the Crusaders (in red) because of two or three pedantic, nit-picking penalties from a referee whose approach to the rulebook was reminiscent of an Indian railway official. And Eddie Jones STILL thought HE was hard done by.
Allied to rule 4 is rule 5: “Most Rule Changes are Made by Cretins Intent on Destroying Rugby as a Spectacle”. Watching the new crouch-touch-pause-engage ritual in the scrums and the resulting endless resets rivals the excitement of watching the grass grow, although not quite. Equally, the new ban on rucking merely gives another excuse for inadequate defending teams to lounge on the ball at the ruck.
Talking about the indecipherable, Rule 6 (which is known popularly as the John Mitchell-Eddie Jones rule) is “The More That Coaches Talk, the Less Sense They Make”. You have to conclude that if a smart, non-punch drunk person like yourself has no idea what Eddie and John are talking about, what chance have some of the, err, modestly witted players on their teams?
Rule 7 will be familiar to most of you: “Having Made Your Tips, Don’t Second Guess Yourself.” Your first instinct, let’s just say, might have been to tip The Hurricanes against the Chiefs. But then you started getting all fancy – “The ‘Canes tight five are poo,” you thought. “They are without their AB loosies. Skipper Conrad Smith is out injured and they lost last week to, gulp, Queensland. Plus, surely, The Chiefs would not lose twice in a row at home?”
Which brings me back to Rule Number 1: “Never Tip The Chiefs”.
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