The Silver Fern

Newcastle are fairly comfortable going through to the EFL Cup final, 4-0 on aggregate. Arsenal not looking half as comfortable when they are the pressee instead of the presser - they were hounded all over the pitch.

If you go onto Statsguru and look at the very crude "difference between batting and bowling average" stat for bowlers with 100 wickets, then the top 4 are
Sobers
Kallis
Imran
Miller
and in my opinion, those are the 4 main contenders - the top 2 near the very best of all time as batsmen and very good bowlers, the next 2 near the very best of all time as bowlers and very good batsmen.

Kallis is definitely the dullest of the 4. Sobers was a swashbuckling batsman, could bowl with the new ball and then bowl various flavours of spin. Imran was fearsome with the ball and a classical batsman. Miller was a legendary quick bowler who also liked to buckle his swash.

Lots of very good players underneath those 4 - the next 10 are
Jadeja, Pollock, Goddard, Greig, Shakib, Noble, Botham, Hadlee, Cairns, Davidson.

It's back, the best tipping competition on the interwebs (according to me). @Duluth has done the hard yards behind the scenes and Week 1 is ready to tip right now. Everything is on the link below, bookmark it now.

TSF Tipping

The Silver Fern's tipping competition

All of the data on that page shows Super Tipping 2024 with @hydro11 as individual champion (yet again) and Barbarians as the champion team (yet again). To join the comp, just tip week 1 and select your preference for the team you want to play for.

As this year's Super Rugby Pacific has a very unfriendly 11 teams, there will be no more than 5 matches per weekend. Scoring will be
Exact pick (result 9-16 and pick 9-16): 12 points
Close pick (result 9-16 and pick 1-8): 9 points
Far away pick (result 1-8 and pick 17+): 6 points
Close but wrong pick (result 1-8 and pick 1-8 for the other team): 2 points
Everything else including matches finishing as a draw: 0 points

The category picks (team to score most points, closest game etc) are all worth 5 points (if, for example, 2 teams are level with most points then you score 5 points for either pick)

@bayimports said in EPL 2024/2025:

Eli Junior Kroupi

Looks like Chelsea were sniffing around him - he's made a good decision to go to a club that may actually nurture his career.

So will Rashford by Lingard at West Ham and revitalised by a move - or barely get a kick? With Duran gone and Watkins picking up an injury, Rashford may end up playing up top. He'll have to work hard to satisfy Emery.

City try to press and play a high line but their press is lethargic and they are played through easily, City try to play out from the back but are being caught out by teams with a good press. The loss of Rodri has been a major factor but the lack of legs and physique is causing them to be shown up. Arsenal looking like the only team that can catch Liverpool and that will depend on Liverpool stumbling.

Meanwhile EPL top scorers

Salah 21 (6 pens)
Haaland 19 (1 pen)
Isak, Wood 17 (1 & 3 pens)

@bayimports said in EPL 2024/2025:

Think Villa will be sad to see him go, was very impressive this season especially when Watkins wasn’t scoring. Coach probably only annoyed they never really gelled playing together. It was one or the other.

Still good funds for Villa

Conversely maybe they know he just had golden streak of hammering in a few great goals and are cashing in while they can - and given he has gone to Saudi, no doubt he was pushing Villa to give him a massive pay rise.

John Duran off to Saudi Arabia for 64 million quid - looks like the boy was keen to make as much money as quickly as possible. Can't see Watkins moving to Arsenal now, although apparently he's quite keen to go. Rumour is that Villa want 80m quid.

@NTA said in Other Cricket:

Annabell Sutherland - daughter of former Cricket Australia CEO James - brings up the first women's ton on the MCG.

England are awful

Watched the highlights package and the dropped catches were embarrassing - even a social cricket team would demand a higher standard than that. Players in catching positions seemed surprised by the ball coming to them .....

Women's Ashes test going the same way as the ODIs and T20s so far - it's 12-0 to Australia and looking likely to finish 16-0. Alana King is a lovely bowler to watch, flight, dip, turn - everything that a leggie should have.

@bayimports said in EPL 2024/2025:

Pretty sure it will end against the pool, but the three longest Premier League unbeaten streaks are also the longest gathered by any sides over the course of the season: Liverpool 18, Arsenal 13, Bournemouth 11, with the Cherries last losing back on November 23.
Still pinching myself that we are currently in the same breath as these two

Looking back on the season, it has been more of a story of Bournemouth giving points away to teams they should beat - otherwise they would be in the top 3. Crazy that you can go to an inform Newcastle and beat them 4-1 with 12 senior players - then take on Forest's miserly defence and pump 5 past them (with another goal ruled out for offside that would have been the best of the lot). Iraola must have that squad so well drilled that he can throw a midfielder in at right back and a winger at centre-forward ... who gets a hat-trick. I would Kevin Keegan love it if they could topple Liverpool as well.

There never will be consistency, every incident is different, the state of every game is different. I'm not saying it wasn't a harsh red as it was but it also wasn't the worst decision ever which the screeching ex-players keep on calling it. If it had been "just a trip" then VAR would have corrected Oliver but he actually saw it perfectly. If you look at Lewis-Skelly after he makes the challenge he knows he's in trouble because he knew what he'd done.

Anyway my main complaint is that the relentless focus on referees and accusations of bias against them WILL NOT MAKE ANYTHING BETTER! The standard of refereeing will just go down as nobody will want to put themselves through all the abuse. It also sucks the joy out of the sport and the same happens with rugby and this site is terrible for that. Rant over.

@Bovidae said in EPL 2024/2025:

The Gomes challenge was worse. Of course, he should have received a second yellow before then for kicking the ball away. But Oliver...

But his yellow was his second and therefore he was off anyway. VAR isn't going to stop the game to review a potential red.

VAR couldn't overturn it because they could see where contact was made. Factor in that it was already a certain yellow for it being a "professional foul" then it is definitely more than a yellow.

@Donsteppa That's a cool story. Williamson and Boult played junior cricket at Albion just a couple of years before I was involved there.

With Bournemouth, it looks very much like a triumph of the system and the players all knowing their role in that system, even when key players are out. Pressing high is a great way to disrupt your opposition but every player needs to know where to move to or you get caught out and are wide open.

Moyes gets a win and goals for Everton - Spurs probably an ideal opponent at this time. Brighton beat Man U yet again, United's formation manages to combine being overrun in midfield with being weak down their defensive flanks. I'm not even sure what they are trying to do.

That was a weird game. West Ham with 3 shots and 3 goals, 2 of them gifted by Fulham. Iwobi gets 2 without shooting either time.

@dogmeat said in Other Cricket:

@KiwiPie C'mon you know better than that. Rice and Hadlee were crucial to Notts success in the 80's but any side with Tim Robinson, Broad, Randell, Bruce French could bat a bit. Pace wise the two all rounders were supported by Cooper Andy pick and saxelby. Spin was Eddie Hemmings. You had other decent county batsmen like Newell and Johnson as well

1981 season:
Rice (top scorer) 1462 runs at 56.23
Hadlee 734 runs at 32.39

Hadlee 105 wickets at 14.89
Rice 65 wickets at 19.20

Hemmings took 84 wickets and Randall made over 1000 runs but my point still stands - unusual for 2 players to dominate so much with bat and ball.

The Kerr sisters at the moment are like Hadlee and Rice for Nottinghamshire in the 1980s - have to score all the runs and take all the wickets

For our older listeners - RIP to Tony Book. Managed to follow Malcolm Allison, one of those large than life coaches who sprang up in the 1960s, to Bath City, Toronto, Plymouth and Manchester City. Was already 30 before he joined Plymouth yet managed to win all the domestic trophies plus a European trophy with City. After he retired from playing at almost 40, he became City manager.

@sparky said in EPL 2024/2025:

Notts Forest leading Liverpool. Have we got a title race on our hands?

I don't think so. None of Liverpool's competitors look to have the consistency to catch them unless they collapse.

Good points for Bournemouth and Brentford and a win for West Ham - Graham Potter? More like Harry Potter, am I right?