WC2010 – the penultimate qualifying week

The story so far:

Qualified

1. South Africa
2. Japan
3. Australia
4. Korea Republic
5. Netherlands
6. Korea DPR
7. Brazil
8. Ghana
9. England
10. Spain
11. Paraguay

11 teams in, 21 to go. 72 matches in the next week will see at least 12 more teams qualify, with just the playoffs and maybe some African spots to be sorted out in November. I’ll go group by group.

UEFA 1

Denmark will qualify with a home win over Sweden this weekend. Sweden, Hungary and Portugal all have a chance to qualify if they win both their games and other results go their way. If Sweden beats Denmark this weekend, there will be no Cristiano Ronald at the world cup!

UEFA 2

Switzerland will qualify with a win and a draw from their 2 games (away to Luxembourg, home to Israel). Greece, Latvia and Israel all have a small chance to qualify if they win both their games and other results go their way.

UEFA 3

Slovakia will go through with a draw at home to Slovenia. Should they lose, they’ll need to beat Poland away from home to ensure their passage. If they don’t Slovenia is in with a chance. It’s an epic battle between the former Czechoslovakians and the former Yugoslavians. My money is on the boys from Bratislava.

UEFA 4

Germany will descend on Moscow needing a victory to ensure their progress. A draw will keep them as favourites to progress, but a loss will put Russia in the hot seat. Whichever country doesn’t qualify automatically will be seeded into the playoffs anyway, so it’s likely we’ll see both teams in South Africa.

UEFA 5

Spain is already through. Bosnia just need an away win over Estonia to make the play-offs.

UEFA 6

England is already through. Ukraine need an upset win over the poms to get the upper hand in the battle against Croatia for the playoff spot.

UEFA 7

Serbia are through with a home win over Romania. If they lose, then France’s slim hopes are alive. A win for France will stitch up the playoff spot for them.

UEFA 8

An away draw against Ireland will put our old friends Italy into the Cup, hopefully lining up a revenge match for us. If Ireland wins, they still have a very slim chance of overtaking Italy for direct qualification, but will most likely go into the playoffs.

UEFA 9

The Netherlands are through already and play Australia tomorrow night in Sydney. Norway have sewn up second position, and are odds-on favourites to miss out on the play-offs by virtue of being the worst second place team.

AFC

Côte d’Ivoire are almost guaranteed to qualify after this weekend, needing just a draw against Malawi. Cameroon, Tunisia and Algeria all have a good chance to qualify this week with wins if other results go their way. For Togo and Nigeria, a win this week will put them in the hot seat to qualify with a win in November, but everyone else needs to win and hope for results to go their way.

CONCACAF

The USA just need a win to go through. Mexico need a win and a draw. Honduras and Costa Rica need two wins. El Salvador need a miracle. It will be a tight battle between Honduras and Costa Rica to see who goes down to South America to get flogged in the playoff. Both teams will need to get a result against the USA to maximise their chances. If they both win, then it’s bye bye Uncle Sam.

CONMEBOL

Brazil and Paraguay are of course already through. Chile just needs 2 points to be safe. Ecuador can also be safe with wins from both their games. For everyone else, it’s going to be a nail-biting week. Argentina seems to have the easiest passage with a home game against Peru to start up with. Colombia face Chile, Venezuela face Paraguay and Uruguay face Ecuador; losses for any of these teams would see the end of their campaign. Looks like Diego Maradona could be spared the mantle of “Worst coach ever*” for the time being.

Playoffs

Last but certainly not least: The AFC/OFC playoff 1st leg! Bahrain vs New Zealand. What a world cup it would be if Australia, South Africa and the kiwis were involved. See you next time.

*Excluding Frank Farina

More world cup qualifying

75 games are in action on the 5th, 6th and 9th of September. We should get at least a couple of additions to the world cup lineup (currently South Africa, Japan, Australia, Korea Republic, Netherlands and Korea DPR).

New Zealand’s playoff opponent will be decided in the Asian 5th place playoff between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

In Africa, Ghana can go through with a win over Sudan if Mali and Benin draw.

In Europe, Denmark can go through with wins over Portugal and Albania if Hungary don’t beat Sweden and Portugal.

Slovakia can go through with wins over Northern Ireland and Czech Republic if Poland don’t beat Northern Ireland.

Germany can go through by beating Azerbaijan if Russia loses to Liechtenstein and Wales and Finland doesn’t beat Azerbaijan and Liechtenstein.

Spain can go through by beating Estonia and Belgium if Bosnia-Herzegovina don’t beat Armenia and Turkey.

England can get through no questions asked with a win over Croatia.

Serbia can get through with a win over France if France also lose to Romania.

Italy can go through with wins over Georgia and Bulgaria if the Republic of Ireland loses to Cyprus.

Almost anything could happen in CONCACAF – Costa Rica, Honduras and the USA could all qualify if results go their way. More than likely it will remain a 4-way battle with Mexico for the direct spots.

In CONMEBOL, Brazil can qualify by beating Argentina and Chile. Chile can qualify by beating Brazil and Venezuela if Ecuador don’t win both their games. Paraguay can qualify by beating Bolivia and Argentina if Ecuador don’t get at least a win and a draw, and Uruguay don’t win both their games.

Looking forward to a lot of time spent on footytube.com next week.

The aftermath

Ricky Ponting has won the mantle of worst ever captain, by losing the ashes a second time. Here’s my assessment of what we need to do now.

• Keep Clarke and North.With 446 runs at 64 and 367 runs at 52 respectively including two centuries each, they were easily the best batsmen in the team.
• Strip Ponting of the captaincy. Give it to North. Give it to Clarke. Transplant SK Warne’s brain into Hilfenhaus and give it to him, I don’t care. Just let Ponting focus on what he does best: scoring runs.
• Put Watson on notice. His batting was fine for an all-rounder, but why are we selecting an all-rounder if we’re not going to bowl him? Of the part timers North, Clarke and even Katich all performed better. Watson either needs to bowl more and take wickets, or start scoring centuries.
• Keep Haddin. I don’t think we have a better alternative.
• Drop Katich and Hussey. Ignoring their one decent innings each, their averages were 31 and 22 respectively.
• Bring Hughes back. We need to develop an opening batsman, and he’s the man. He’ll fix the short ball problem this summer, and if he doesn’t we can just drop him next year. Give the man a chance.
• Bowling becomes tricky. No one took more than 6 wickets in a match. Only Hilfenhaus had an average under 30, but his best innings was 4/60. Our attack needs work. I think that, with everyone fully fit, the best lineup would be Clark, Lee, Johnson and Hilfenhaus. Hauritz is a hack. If one of those four is injured, I would bring in Nathan Bracken.

That’s it for the team. The following people should also be given the boot for their role in our defeat:

• Andrew Hilditch
• David Boon
• Merv Hughes
• Jamie Cox
• Tim Nielsen
• Liz Ellis
• Kevin Rudd

Furthermore, I propose a referendum to alter the constitution at the next election:

Should Australia lose a test cricket series to England, the Governor General shall immediately dismiss the Government and force an election.

Republic of Ireland 0 – 3 Australia

An absolute cracker of a goal from David Carney sealed off a nice win over the world #37 overnight. Our next game on the 5th of September should be interesting – an away match against Korea Republic. Hopefully Pim can get some of the A-League blokes on board to give them a bit of experience.

Another 16 teams were in action overnight in world cup qualifying. With Honduras and Costa Rica playing right now, not a lot has really happened overnight. With Norway’s thumping of Scotland it looks like the second place group 9 UEFA team is going to miss out on the playoffs. Mexico beat the USA which puts them back in a solid position, while Trinidad and Tobago kept their hopes of a second consecutive world cup alive with a win over El Salvador.

All eyes now on the 5th, 6th and 9th of September, when 75 matches should see a few teams cementing world cup slots. England is the only team likely to qualify during this time, but Brazil can sneak in as well with a couple of wins.

Update: Honduras smashed Costa Rica 4-0! CONCACAF is looking interesting, with just 3 points separating the top 4. T&T are now pretty much done, and it’s going to be a scuffle to avoid a playoff with South America. The pressure’s back on Mexico, with must-win games against Honduras and Costa Rica next month.

Andrew Hilditch must go

Dear Andrew,

I have compiled some statistics, for your edification and education. I provide these free of charge so you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of having to actually watch any cricket.

At the moment, the only person who needs dropping from the ranks of Australian cricket is AMJ Hilditch.

Regards &c.,

Countdown to the world cup

111 days and 176 games remain until we will know the last of the 32 teams who will be playing in South Africa next year. 16 days after the 4th place CONCACAF team plays the 5th place CONMEBOL team, we will know exactly who Australia will be up against next June.

Let’s look at the best case scenario first:

The seeded teams should be: South Africa; Italy; Brazil; Germany; Spain; England; Argentina; France. No prizes for guessing who we’d like out of this group.

The Europe pot will depend largely on the draw for the second-place playoffs, but Slovakia look good to top group three, so I think we’ll assume they’ll be there.

We can assume that we’ll be in a group with CONCACAF, so we don’t have to worry about those guys. The last group will be CAF/CONMEBOL plus an odd CONCACAF side if CONCACAF wins a 4th place. Algeria is topping their group in CAF, so let’s draw them too.

So our best case scenario: Australia (#16), Slovakia (#42) and Algeria (#47), South Africa (world #72).

Worst case scenario: I guess you could take your pick from the seeded teams, but let’s just assume that playing the world number one is not a good thing and pick Brazil.

Netherlands will end up unseeded due to the intricacies of FIFA’s matrix. They’ll be the hardest team in the UEFA pot.

For the final pot, you can either assume that the USA will get put in there, or (more likely) that it will be a 5th place CONMEBOL team which would make Côte d’Ivoire the highest ranked. Since this is worst-case scenario, let’s go with USA.

So, our worse-case scenario group: Brazil (#1), Netherlands (#3), USA (#12), Australia (#16).

As you can clearly see, it’s all in the draw!

Australian test side

After losing the most exciting home test series for a long time, Australia needs to have a good look at their lineup if we are to beat South Africa in the return tour. With the help of Statsguru v2.0, I have come up with the following list of players who deserve to keep their place in the team.

Batsmen:

• MJ Clarke – 383 runs @ 76.6. Brilliant.
• SM Katich – 297 runs @ 49.5. Not at his best, but still the second best of the summer.
• RT Ponting – 285 runs @ 47.5. Shit captain, still a great batsman.
• BJ Haddin – 228 runs @ 45.6. His place isn’t really in question anyway.

These guys were the only batsmen who outperformed Mitchell Johnson, who had an average of 23.4 before this summer. Everyone else should be dropped.

Bowlers:

• MJ Johnson – 17 wickets @ 25.88. With Johnson in the team, the selectors can stop farting around looking for an all-rounder, and we can pick five strike bowlers instead. His spell of 5/2 in Perth was incredible. I love him; I wanna boof him; get him up here.
• PM Siddle – 13 wickets @ 27.38. A decent showing. I think he has solved the problem of trying to find a fourth bowler.

Obviously Lee underperformed in this series, but he did look good, and I think he suffered from not having Stuart Clark at the other end. Andrew McDonald did alright, and I think he would be good as a replacement for when Clark is injured with his consistent line and length.

So if Clark and Lee are both back from injury, we need to grab a fifth bowler and two more batsman for the first test in Jo’burg. Hussey will keep his place, but I think Hayden will go. The jury is still out on his replacement.

ML Hayden must go

Allow me to present the latest in my series of questionable uses of cricket statistics highlighting why popular Queenslanders should be dumped from prominent sporting positions.

ML Hayden: born October 29, 1971 in Kingaroy, QLD. One of Australia’s greatest openers. High score: 380 at the WACA Ground. 30 test hundreds in 100 matches. 127 catches.

RT Ponting recently stated that Hayden was “undroppable”. However, many in the media have been questioning his performances of late, so I thought that I would trawl the cricinfo archives and put together my favourite misued tool, a graph.

At first glance, you can see that ML Hayden used to be brilliant, but now sucks and should be dropped. Let me explain. I have graphed Hayden’s average counting all tested from each plotted point until the present. So, the end of the graph shows just his last innings, the middle of the graph shows the latter half of his career, and the start of the graph shows his actual average over his entire career.

Legitimate.

The graph clearly shows that, since last summer against India (where he was brilliant), ML Hayden has sucked pretty comprehensively. In fact, he has been in decline since the last home Ashes.

So should we drop him? Yes! Do we have a reliable replacement? Probably not. Is that going to stop me from calling for him to be dropped? No!

Ponting, you’re next on my hit list.

Punter

Every three years, we are presented with the chance to cast a meaningless vote for a chump who will mismanage our country for the next little while. We could all do without this pointless exercise.

And yet, when we really need the right man for the job, he is appointed by a faceless committee, with no public consultation process! Usually, they get it right, but when they don’t, the results can be disastrous.

The following people were better captains than Ricky Ponting:

• DW Gregory
• WL Murdoch
• TP Horan
• HH Massie
• JM Blackham
• HJH Scott
• PS McDonnell
• G Giffen
• GHS Trott
• J Darling
• H Trumble
• MA Noble
• C Hill
• SE Gregory
• WW Armstrong
• HL Collins
• W Bardsley
• J Ryder
• WM Woodfull
• VY Richardson
• DG Bradman
• WA Brown
• AL Hassett
• AR Morris
• IWG Johnson
• RR Lindwall
• ID Craig
• R Benaud
• RN Harvey
• RB Simpson
• BC Booth
• WM Lawry
• BN Jarman
• IM Chappell
• GS Chappell
• GN Yallop
• KJ Hughes
• AR Border
• MA Taylor
• SR Waugh
• AC Gilchrist

2007 in review

We appear to have come to the end of another year. As is the tradition at this time of year, I shall now provide my own summary of my favoured events, in chronological order.

January: 5-0

Revenge was sweet, as Australia scored an Ashes whitewash for the first time in 86 years or so. The greatest bowler in the history of the universe, Glenn McGrath, retired from the game in style, and the poms were sent home with nothing. Except for the Ashes, that is. They’re such bad sports that they won’t even let us keep the trophy.

January: Tool

This was the second time I have seen Tool. Awesome.

July: Cadel Evans

In the closest ever top three finish, Cadel Evans became the greatest ever Australian cyclist, finishing just 23 seconds away from the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. This is despite having one of the weaker support teams. Next year for sure!

August: The Farm

This was the seventh (?) trip to the farm, and with the biggest fire yet, it was certainly one of the best. Highlights include drinking, cooking dead animals, and lighting stuff on fire. Oh, and my successful comeback to the exciting sport of postie bike riding. This time, without the crashing into tree part.

September: The Combat Wombats

For the first time since 2005, we put together a Futsal team. Despite our final position on the table (10 games, 0 wins, 0 draws) we had a fantastic season and I’m confident that we can only go up in 2008.

November: Dani Ecuyer Dummy Spit

It was a bumpy road for Dani Ecuyer. Running for the seat of Wentworth against her ex-boyfriend George Newhouse, and sitting MP Malcolm Turnbull, she caused a bit of a stir in the media.

A satirical piece on this site was the final straw for Dani, who believed that Miranda Devine was really calling her a left-wing harlot. This response was posted on votedani.com:

Miranda Devine, Caroline Overington and Climate Change

Well well well, it seems the sisterhood only works in theory. It’s official I am having a real impact on the incumbents and I have now been called a ‘harlot’ by Miranda Devine.’ So I work on Climate Change and the pulp mill. Two super hot issues in election 2007, especially in the Environment Minister, Mr Turnbull’s electorate. Now I am a ’stiletto thumping femme fatale’ and a harlot to boot. Amused, well I can assure you I am not amused in the slightest. I am running on real issues and have two websites to prove it, not to mention a serious career in investment banking.

And it went on… Of course, this post was removed from her site shortly afterwards. Obviously a friend let her in on the joke.

Thank you Dani, for brightening up an otherwise grey campaign.

November: Maxine’s victory

I would like to say that the Labor victory in November was one of the highlights of the year. However, as I believe that Kevin Rudd is the spawn of the devil, I shall only pause to commemorate Maxine McKew’s victory over a populist PM who had it coming for a long time.

My grandmother once recounted how she had believed that “Honest John”, as he was known back in the 90s, was going to be great for the country, and we were going to have sunshine and roses every day.

Eleven years later, even the staunchest Liberal voter would have to admit that Johnny had lost his sheen long ago, and that the lies had always been justified by the electorate’s hip pocket. Thankfully, no longer will this be the case.

December: The Wedding

Yes, on December the 15th I married my bride, Sarah. This signalled the end of the first stage of my life, as I settled down and became a responsible member of society.

That’s what I told Sarah, anyway.

To the pub!

Well, that about sums up all the important events of 2007. I’m off to Tasmania for the honeymoon, and will be back at the end of January. Bon voyage!

Postlude: I would like to wish a quick congratulations to Mr Nicholas J. Broadbent, and his magnificent fiancée Mel. Nice one!