R17

An apology and explanation for lack of contact, lack of content. General lack.

Firstly, these Thursday games have been killing my momentum. I'd just about get the ladder done, my mind around writing some snippet of garbage and then BANG! It's Thursday and before you know it, before I'm ready, there's a game on and I'm knocked out of stride, thrown off my stroke.

That's the first excuse and now, well last Thursday actually, my laptop died. Really quite dead. Among the items not backed up it appears was a significant slice of PunchDrunk history and all this year's base files. The upshot I'm afraid is no more ladder for the year. I could remake it from scratch but I'm not going to. It's redundant anyway, the icing on an ever-diminishing cake. Now there's little cake, no icing and even the plate is looking chipped and dirty.

Since last we had a little chat we've endured 3 weeks of momentum-sapping byes, and a few full rounds, but you know what? Bernie's still perched on top of the tree like a cat who's not sure how he got there and is either too scared to come down or is just being, well... a cat. Annoying and playing with our psyche's. 

Here's your new ladder:

R11

This time last week the Tigers were finals bound, the 'Pies were still in bounce-back mode and our very own Leah Champs was sitting at 6th having won the round with 8 wins and margin-variance of a solitary point.

This time this week? Well, the Tiges are shot, dead, extinct (again), the Pies are cooked and Leah, having scored possibly the first zero in PunchDrunk history*, is sitting at 34th.  28 spots, not the greatest single-week fall in 'Drunk history as I recently explored with Harv, but a damn good effort nonetheless.

Bernie (who I used to like a lot) clearly missed my email on how to keep the comp interesting and pulled out 9 wins at a margin fail of just 4 points (possibly the best single week result in 'Drunk history*) to stride further out in front. As if he knows where the hell he's going.

If you're interested the most significant single week falls in the past 5 years have been:

R2 2012: Harv drops 17
R6 2012: Rob drops 19
R2 2013: Harv drops 30
R2 2014: Trobby drops 34
R4 2014:  Leah drops 23
R4 2015: Schena drops 20
R7 2016: Harv drops 21


* No idea really.

R10

If there's one thing that drives the decent, honest footy-goer crazy, it's the current craze of drawing a high tackle free from ducking, draping, head-butting etc. A couple of weeks back I endured watching Rhys Mathieson's dubious debut, wherein he cheated his way to no less than 6 free kicks through perfectly timed collapsing of his undercarriage as he was being tackled. Sucked the maggots in every single time but one, where he was rightly pinged for holding

And while Lindsay Thomas was in the news last week for the same misdemeanour, apparently his numbers aren't as incriminating, with something like 4 high-tackle frees for to date for the whole season.

I took it upon myself to do some research to try to ascertain whether this is a new problem.
As you can see by the images below, it seems this has been going on for a while now.

 Meanwhile here's where we're at:

R9

Ever get that Phelan? Well Bernie's got it right now.
After 28 years in PunchDrunk Bernie's finally hit the lead for the first time ever.*

* T's&C's: I have no idea if this is even remotely true, and I'm too lazy to look back and see if we've been going 28 years, 27 or whatever.  It's late, it's beer o'clock and I hereby hand over the reins of this potential pun-fest to to Tassy and Taffa.

Jackpot's hit $200. Phelan lucky?

R7

Seven rounds in and we can see what shape the AFL ladder's taking. The Final 8 is already decided, no-one else is going anywhere. Some big ins, some bigger outs.
The Brownlow is now down to 4 players. Danger, Viney and 2 others I've forgotten.
Fyfe's gone, Swan's sung his swan song, Little Gary's a little dead and buried. There are still some of those frizzy bad-hair-day guys from the West everyone gets mixed-up... I dunno who they are Priddis, Mayne, Ted Bundy and some others.

Pretty much it's all about who's gun forward is the gunniest. Buddy... seems he can still play, even though he's looking a little chubby-chopped yeah? I guess his wallet's been in a pretty good paddock. Then there's that guy from the West with the beard who goes out and kicks 13 goals every eighth week. There are 2 guys with the same name, the Lynch mob, one of whom is the shiznit. There's the highest paid teenager in Footscray, who barely gets a game, but goes OK. There's that guy from St Kilda, who reminds me a bit of that other guy from St Kilda from a couple of decades ago. The one who liked the 'dogs and pies. And then there's the $15m man.

Just rambling now. Here's this:

Bob Brookmeyer's bobbed up, cream floats. Where'd he/she come from?

Bern's a bit pissed at that low-life Roo. The one with the stop-watch and the goal at the end of the day. Reckons he cost him the $140 jackpot. But then he kicked the goal anyway and cost him $140 by even more. Which is a bit confusing really.

Our ladder's a bit more shapely too, starting to get a bit of a taper happening after about 6 weeks of pretty-much total verticality.
About half the top half of the table are previous winners (6 of the top 11? 8 of the top 16?). I'm predicting we'll get either a former winner take it out again, or if not, a first time winner pinch it.

Rambling over. And out.

R5

It's all pretty-much locked up on the Drunk ladder at the moment, some pretty close games coming up in the real world this week too.

5 weeks in and footy's still more weighted toward interesting than controversial. Apart from that stupid out of bounds rule, or its policing at least.

The bombers are pretty much where everyone wants them to be. The Tiges are back to where we all think they should be, deep down. Everyone's happy about the cold Pies. And no-one has any sympathy for Freo.

Anyway, that's them, this is us:

Basically nothing between 1st and 22nd really. Or 24th. Or 27th, or even 31st.

It's pretty much a dead-heat, BUT Lex is back on the top of the heap, and we all know she's got it in her, she's done it before.

The jackpot's still jacking up, still in the pot. $120 now and looking very attractive indeed.