The NOFTE

(The NETWORK OPERATIONS FOOTY TIPPING EMAIL)

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ROUND 2 UPDATE

THE “LET’S SPARE A THOUGHT FOR ALL DEMONS FANS” ROUND

We’ll get to Melbourne’s terrific start to the season in a second, but first, I need to waste some of your time complaining about the standard of umpiring that I, a completely unbiased football follower, witnessed on Friday night at the Gabba.

I mean. Fair dinkum, it was disgraceful.

The Pies were definitely robbed. Normally it’s the Pies doing the robbing. Or their supporters at least anyway!

With the assistance of the Collingwood Cheer Squad Head Honcho Joffa, I put together this identikit picture of the main umpiring culprit.

Would you trust this man?

Now Mr Michael Vozzo is wearing the yellow umpire get up in this picture. A rather appropriate colour I would have thought. And perfect for insults.

One of our tippers, Fevolution, grew up playing cricket against Mr Vozzo in the East Doncaster league. Apparently Mr Vozzo wasn’t a bad cricketer. If only he’d stuck to summer sports..........

But anyway, on Friday night the umpires were wearing green.

How can you insult an umpire dressed in green? In the old days, it was easy because they were always ‘white maggots’. But I struggled to think of any insult that might hurt their feelings enough, so much so that they’d have a good hard look at themselves and perhaps just stick to their accounting or school teaching jobs, and leave the umpiring to the professionals.

The only insults I could come up with during the game were:

1. “You green frog Vozzo”
2. “You green leaf Vozzo”
3. “You green blade of grass Vozzo’

None of these insults appeared to have the effect I was looking for.

But then on Monday morning I rocked up at work and grabbed my cup, which had been sitting on my desk since Friday. I looked in it and what did I see but the perfect insult staring me straight in the face!

From now on the green umpires will be insulted with “You green mouldy scunge <insert scumbag umpires name here>”.

Note: this is a real photo – and yes I did rinse the cup with a little water before switching it with The Phantom Tipsters clean cup!

** Special Deal for any Chermside shoppers **

Tippers have I got an offer for you!

One of our new tippers, ‘rocket’, has very kindly offered a 20% discount at his Chermside Surf Shop, Blue Water Surf, to any VB staff.

All you need to do is present your VB Staff ID and mention "Coolio’s Absolutely Unbelievably Excellent and Fantastic Footy Tipping Comp" to get this discount.

Then you can shop to your heart’s content. Go buy yourself that new surfboard you’ve always wanted, and take it down to Nudgee Beach to hang 10 in the mud!

** Congratulations it’s a baby! **

Congratulations to The Phantom Tipster and the lovely Mrs Phantom on the safe (but delayed) arrival of Luke James Phantom Tipster.

The Phantom tipped the Blues by 88 points in Round 1, so if The Phantom’s new baby Phantom was going to be fed and clothed with any tipping winnings, he’s going to be a pretty cranky little Phantom!

Prizes:

** I’ll be finalising total tippers next week as I’m still to collect money from four three two of you**

This year I’m sticking with the weekly winner’s prize of $20. You win a round and you get your money back. That’s a good incentive to not get lazy when you’re sitting down the bottom of the ladder! And like I keep explaining every year, I don’t reward losers, so there’s no prize for coming last. Sorry NB Jockey.

Last year we had 3 prizes for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd.

This year we’ll have prizes for 1^st through to 5^th.

I’ll work it all out something like this:

Total prize pool = Number of paid up tippers x $20

Weekly prizes = 22 rounds x $20

1^st place = approx 50% remaining prize pool

2^nd place = approx 25% “ “

3^rd place = approx 15% “ “

4^th place = approx 6% “ “

5^th place = approx 4% “ “

All the tipping entry fees go into the prizes. The $4.37 that I earn on interest goes to my bookies. Peyts, just accept it.

WEEKLY WINNERS ARE GRINNERS:

2008 Weekly Winners

Round 3

1^st – Tony Hand

Tony Hand aka ‘Handyman’ or known last year as ‘The Hand’ has pulled off a sneaky win in Round 2. From memory (I do have the archives but can’t be bothered checking) Tony won a round last season as well. In fact, my Research Assistant has just advised me that Tony won Round 22 last season. So he’s currently sitting on 2 wins in 3 rounds!

Handyman’s on a roll!

2^nd – Virginia Wilson

Don’t get me started on Virginia. We went to the footy on Friday night, to see the Lions and the Pies. I’ve already discussed my contempt for the umpiring. But the Pies losing and the bad umpiring was made all the more worse by the fact that I was seated between two ravenous (yet gorgeous!) Brisbane Lionesses.

And I’ve never met a pair of sorer winners than these two.

The rather tense and fairly quiet walk back to the car was punctuated by comments like:

“Hey Coolio, what was the final score again?”

“Hey Coolio, how many goals did Rocca kick?”

“Hey Coolio, wasn’t the umpiring good tonight!”

“Hey Coolio, WAIT ..........don’t drive off without us, come back please. We’re really sorry!”

3^rd – aqueous

I’m sure you’re a top bloke, but ‘aqueous’, you’ve been beaten this week by a Swans supporter and a Lions supporter. So if you are serious about this competition you’ll take it on the chin, just like any member of the Australian Olympic Swimming team would, and start preparing for Round 3. I’d suggest a slightly tougher sounding nickname. What about ‘Juddernought’? I thought it might have been taken by Fevolution, but it appears he’s sticking thick with the Fev.

THE NETWORK OPS AFL LEADERBOARD

2008 Tipping ladder

1^st - Bondy you are on fire son! The former original Main Met man of the VB OCC (no offence Manny!), is now on ‘odd job’ assignments around the home, and enjoying his retirement. A closet Hawks fan, Bondy is not only a good AFL tipper, but also a pretty good Super 14’s tipper!

He’s presently coming 2^nd in the Virgin Blue Super 14’s competition.

We all know that there’s only 1 code of footy worth following, but I think it’s only fair we humour Bondy a little and tell him he’s doing a great job!

It’s CAVOK for Round 3 Bondy!

2^nd - Jimmy C is now residing in regulator heaven at CASA, but it’s good to see that he’s not forgotten his roots, and remains a loyal Virgin Blue Network Ops tipper.

Jimmy C’s move was an amicable transfer (unlike human headline Aker’s or Mal “I’m really retiring” Michael’s move to other clubs!) and we know he’ll be in touch to warn us when the next CASA audit is. Well he’d better be, otherwise I’ll let rip with some brutal sledging in the NOFTE. And Fevolution has loose lips, so I know I’ve got a good source down in Flight Ops!

3^rd - Roadie continues his excellent form after winning $20 in Round 1, and follows up with a solid 6 in round 2, and currently sits in 3^rd spot on the ladder! He’s the highest ranking Collingwood supporter. Until I lift my game that is.

THE 2008 HALL OF SHAME

2008 Network Ops AFL Winners Table

THE NETWORK OPS NIPPERS LADDER

(Where it’s cool to like ‘Wii’ – for all you oldies, it’s pronounced “wee”).

1. Bones
2. Footy Freak97
3. The Electric Drummer
4. Iceman
5. Hot Dog

‘Funny FaceS’ of the Week

HOW TO SLEDGE YOUR MATES

Sledging is an important aspect of tipping in the Network Ops AFL tipping comp. Many times over the 33 year history of our prestigious competition, a leader has crumbled at the final hurdle after a well timed or placed sledge.

Let me give some examples;

1987 – Leader after Round 21, OWSTA, fell apart in the final round after the eventual winner, Kay Cottee, sent OWSTA an email exposing a sordid love affair between his two favourite Essendon players, Bill Duckworth and Ronnie Andrews.

It wasn’t until 2007, a whole 20 years later, that OWSTA finally overcame the lasting nightmares and disturbing visual imagery of Billy and Ronnie showering together at Windy Hill after a hot pre-season training run.

An interesting sidenote to this story is that Kay Cottee continued her excellent form the following year, when she became the first woman to sail unassisted and non-stop, and all around the wide wide world! Kay says that it was the toughness she learnt while being sledged in our tipping comp that helped her through those lonely days at sea, while she was moored off the Northern NSW coast.

2006 – Aptly nicknamed ‘The Choker’, and formerly known as ‘gothetahs’, this Northern Beaches of Sydney private schooled Swans supporter, was allocated his new nickname after breaking up like the Space Shuttle Columbia in the final 2 rounds of the 2006 Super 14 season. I certainly don’t condone our AFL tippers tipping in the Super 14’s comp, especially since it’s ‘that other code’ , but a sledge is a sledge, and I was running that comp back then, so I feel it’s only appropriate that I include this ‘choke of chokes’ by The Choker. This choke is up there with the best of the best. Jana Novotna (every Grand Slam final), Greg Norman (most golfing Majors), and of course, Port Power last year!

Instructions for sledging:

I’ll send each of you an invite to join the sledging blog, but if you want to post a new blog, you also need to create a Google blogger account.

However, if you can’t be bothered or aren’t that great with a computer (G’day Crumpy!), you can reply right now, to any of the blogs already started.

The first sledger who claims and can prove that they were responsible for a fellow tippers fall from grace, will win the coveted ‘Sledge of the Week’ award.

Round 2

‘SLEDGE OF THE WEEK’

Coolio’s top idiot of ROUND 2

Good tipping in Round 3 everyone,

Coolio.