Thirds intra-club game

I popped down to Yeronga last night to get an early glimpse at our new look thirds up against the under 18s. With over 40 players to choose from, Dingo had his work cut out choosing a team. He ended up playing two different thirds teams interchanging them between quarters. The under 18s were very quick and very skillful. Best players for the thirds in my opinion were new players, Aiden and Bazza and past thirds champions, Frekey, Finny and Jeremiah.

Biggest Loser part 2

Controversy in the biggest loser house! After sitting pretty with both remaining members guaranteed immunity. The blue team inexplicably smuggled alcohol into the house. One of the favourites for the competition, Luke managed to drink an entire bottle of spirits, behaved inappropriately and was consequently booted out of the house and disqualified for winning any prizes (including biggest loser outside of the house). With a thousand tv cameras positioned around the house, the act in itself was very strange. Maybe he'd had enough. Anyway, another one bites the dust. Oh and the red team once again dominated the weigh in and continue to lead the competition. However with only one remaining blue team member, the house is surely due for a reformation of the teams. Probably girls v guys.

Weekend

Another quiet weekend. Footy off-season seems to have gone forever. Spent most of the weekend either playing Skyrim on the PS3 and watching the NAB cup and cricket. I seem to remember looking forward to weekends more in the past. Not sure if it has been the reduction in my weekend drinking or an increasing enjoyment at work. Either way Ill be glad when footy season proper starts. Footy trip to Melbourne for round one will be the highlight.

NAB Cup part 2

Some good games tonight. Cats, Saints and Swans. Should be a good chance to see the premier's new kids and to see if the saints will be challengers this year. Also this weekend is the lions, suns and dees. Will be interesting to see Clarke up against his old team. My predictions are saints to finish top out of their group and the suns in a bit of an upset top theirs. Suns kids should be much better with a full season under their belts while the lions will still look to nurse a few of their older bodies through the pre-season. And the dees, well they are a bit of an unknown at the moment. They will rely heavily on Mark Jamar with two of their main ruckmen going down with season ending injuries.

Parks and recreation

Stumbled onto this show the other day on foxtel. For those familiar with the US version of the Office will notice the similarities. The producers of The Office Greg Daniels and Michael Schur (who plays Mose, Dwight's cousin on The Office) came up with the concept and it is now in its fourth season. As the name suggests it is set in the office of the Department of Parks and Recreation. The show is quite funny led by a great cast in Amy Poehler (Saturday night live), Rashinda Jones (The Office) and my personal favourite Aziz Ansari who is an up and coming comedy actor that we will start to see more and more soon. He has been in a few films like I love you man, Funny People and Observe and Report. I look forward to seeing how the show pans out. 3 stars.

Yeronga Thirds

Spent a bit of time updating the thirds page on the Yeronga website last night. http://www.yerongafc.com.au/thirds.html

Might be heading down to watch a few games this year, so I thought I would have a crack at posting some news and photos just for the thirds. Check it out. I haven't had time to put up all of the thirds photos from last year yet, but hopefully they will be up soon. Go the thirsties!!

Biggest Loser

Getting stuck into the latest season of The Biggest Loser on Channel 10. This season the theme is singles, with some kind of small suggestion of the contestants to fall in love (might be difficult for that Margy girl, not many options in the biggest loser house for same sex relationships). Apart from the theme, it's mostly about this bunch of people losing the weight the quickest possible way. The house was originally divided up into boys and girls, then again into young and old. This week they joined the old and new together for a battle of the sexes, which the girls won handsomely. The girls have 4 of the 5 fittest people in the house and this works well for the challenges. They also seem to be the toughest and hardest trainers as reflected at the weigh in. The youngest girl in Michelle leads the charge, though she is reaching the low 90ks now and her weight loss percentage will start to suffer soon. Margy and Lynda are strong and are two of the hardest workers in the house. While the blokes are carried by their only shining light in Luke. However despite him working the hardest of the guys, suffered a bad week on the scales. His diet of only orange food for the week (a result of losing a challenge earlier) might be the factor behind this. He was lucky not to be picked for elimination. The biggest contestant in the history of the competition, Ryan was this weeks eliminated contestant as he was generally disliked by both teams. The contest is a little close to call at the moment. Trainer Shannon usually has the winner at the end, so you would have to think Luke would be the favourite with Hamish a dark horse with youth on his side. But my pick would be Lynda at the moment with Margy the girls dark horse.

Cricket

Gabba on a Sunday is a great place to be. Work the next day is not however. Great time yesterday and a great win. More info and photos will be up on fraserland soon on the news page.

Footy training

First session back at Yeronga thirds training last night. And boy it did hurt. My legs were a little rubbery this morning. Good numbers last night. 5 or 6 returns from last year but about 25 new blokes. A lot of speed too. Should be some good signs this year for improvement. They are in a very tough league so they will need to hit the track running. Good luck the thirsty thirds!

Nothing in particular

Bit of a workload to get through today. After an extended lunch with Jorgo at the pub (drinking diet coke today) and picking up my Lions NAB cup tickets, an hour long meeting and a small detour to the bookshop, I have little time left to get some work done. For those who wonder if I actually do any work at my job you might be surprised to know that I do in fact get quite a bit done during the day. It is now afternoon tea time (uncle toby muesli bar) and I have about an hour an a half left of work before I head down to footy training. A strange activity for a retired player, but I felt like getting some fresh air and having a kick with some mates.

Lions Intra-club

This morning Jorgo and I headed down to Coorparoo to watch the lions vs lions intra-club game. We took our cameras, hoping to get some good action shots. If any of them are any good I'll post up on Fraserland shortly. The game started off a little scrappy. Players not holding their marks and turning the ball over a fair bit. Although that is to be expected in their first competitive hit out. New additions Billy Longer, Ben Hudson and Jordan Lisle went ok, Hudson probably had the best game of the three. Pierce Hanley showed great poise and was often in space with his superior running capacity. Andrew Raines was probably the best on field with numerous clearances and hard running. By the fourth quarter both teams started to hold their marks and the game flowed nicely. Not sure who won out of the blue or maroon teams, but I'm sure the coaches would have been happy with the effort.

NAB Cup

Well footy season is almost upon us. The real stuff is a month off, but in the meantime the NAB cup provides us with a chance to see our clubs showcase their youngsters and for some of us to check out the new fox footy channel. First up is the triple header between Hawthorn, North Melbourne and Richmond on Friday night. For the keen dream team enthusiasts, this is a great opportunity to find some young bargains for the year. It is also a good chance to check out the blokes coming back from injury to see if they will last the year. Players like Brian Lake and Lenny Hayes to name a few. So come Friday, let the siren sound and prepare for another season.

Premier League

After a very eventful weekend in the English Premier League the title race between the two teams from Manchester is still neck and neck. United amidst the controversy surrounding their captain Patrice Evra and Liverpool striker Luiz Suarez came away with a comfortable 2-1 win over the mersysiders. A nice little collect for me on predicting the correct score too. City came straight back this morning with a hard fought 1-0 win over Aston Villa. On a fantasy front, some poor captain choices from the top three prevented any big scores. The big scorers for the week were Wayne Rooney with another double slowly coming back into some hot form. Togolese forward Adebayor came up with 4 assists and a goal to be the pick of the week. For our league, Geoff had another solid week helped by some good scoring off the bench. My defence scored two goals which helped me while Jimmy slipped down the ladder slightly after a tough weekend. Team of the week surprisingly went to bottom placed Jeff with a 67 thanks to a superb move of throwing the captain's armband on Rooney and 18 points from his Manchester City defence. Could Jeff make a late run to get off the bottom of the ladder? Tune in next week to find out.

Cricket

No time for blog today. Watching the cricket and sweating a bit after a little bike ride. About to hit the weights, just wanted to say, how good did Forrest look at the Adelaide oval?

Jeremiah's Cafe

Late breakfast this morning. Our venue, Ashgrove's Jeremiah's Cafe.

Our current favourite venue for breakfast, Jeremiah's checks all the required boxes for a great breakfast. This morning's dish was the ham, cheese and mushroom omelet. Cooked to perfection served with english breakfast tea for me and a steaming mug of cappuccino for the missus. A quiet relaxing way to enjoy the start of the weekend with a good catch up from the proprietor and a full stomach to leave with at a very modest price.

4 stars

Fantasy football

For today's post I will talk about one of my passions. With AFL season not far away, a lot of people I know are preparing their Dream Teams. However before the Dream Team competition for me there was the original fantasy game, Premier League soccer. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Dream Team, it doesn't have a thousand different stats to count. But there lies the appeal, its simplistic in its approach and very addictive. I am now in my 13th season and still hooked. The game is easy, points for goals, assists, clean sheets. Then a few small points for keeper saves, cards and bonus points. There is no set number of trades, but if you spend more than one a week, it will cost you some of your points. The current season sees Geoff once again at the top. Geoff is the local king at this game, winning more often than not. I haven't worked out his secret yet, but his trades and captain choices are normally spot on. I'm currently second with Jimmy right behind. We watch a lot of EPL on TV and pick more on the look and feel of players on the pitch, more than simple stats (probably our downfall). I like to trade based on favourable fixtures and try to avoid picking too many players from one team. Next up is JP, a newcomer to the game and doing a pretty good job. His team is unique, usually with a sprinkle of of unknown players. A dark horse of the competition. Trimsy is next, now in his second season in our league. Hard to get a gauge on his team. Generally has a unique captain choice...I mean walcott as captain? Who saw that coming? Next up is BJ, a very raw rookie in every sense. Started like a house on fire with some great first up picks. However his experience is starting to catch up with him as he starts to drift off the pace. Phil is next, the creator and usual manager of the comp, his team always has a liverpool feel and this is the position he normally occupies on the ladder. Holding up the ladder is my mate Jeff. Who is a passionate city supporter, however this passion sadly does not transfer to this game. Although only his first season, he is sure to improve next season.

Next week I'll give a review of this week's action.

Reading

Since my move to the northern suburbs I have definitely stepped up my reading volume. Sometimes knocking back 2 books per week. This is good for my wife as she reads them after me without having to purchase additional ones. A friend of mine put me onto this fantastic business called 'The Book Depository' It is the largest dedicated online bookseller in the UK. The best part of all is they ship anywhere in the world for free! So when I'm a few books away from running out, I put in an order for some more. Usually the books I'm after cost only $8. A bargain compared to the prices I was paying in Aussie bookstores. I have three writers who I have almost read in entirety. Nelson DeMille, Stephen King and John Grisham. The later two go without saying, but you might not know DeMille. If you get a chance, check him out. His most famous is probably The General's Daughter, which was made into a film staring John Travolta. Anyway even with the help of the low price books at 'The Book Depository'. I still find myself spending too much on books, as well as filling up all of my bookshelves. So the next step will probably be a Kindle. I was hoping to get the new touch screen one, but Amazon isn't currently posting that one to Australia. Anyone using a Kindle at the moment? Also if anyone has an author they would like to suggest, I am running out of books from my favourite authors. My genre's are thrillers and horrors mostly.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/
http://nelsondemille.net/content/index.asp

Quiet train carriage

Anyone else take the quiet carriages on the train? For me I have a 40 minute trip, so I enjoy reading my book and zoning out for the trip home. The quiet carriage is great for this. However, I always seem to get the one person who doesn't know it's meant to be quiet or really doesn't care. Conversations I can handle, as it's hard to ignore your friend you happen to get on with. But making very loud and long phone calls is another thing. Every time I hear a phone ring accompanied by a "No I'm not busy, I can talk", I look around for the surly older person who simply shouts at the talker, "Excuse me this is a quiet carriage!" Sadly these helpful volume controllers are not always on my train. To the bloke from yesterday arvo, I don't care how excited you are about your upcoming weekend plans you are. But it's hard to point the finger too much on these people, as the lack of signage and announcements doesn't exactly make it clear to all passengers. And that's Fraser's two cents for the day.

Superbowl

Another classic encounter. As tradition, I stayed home to watch the yearly NFL decider. The New England Patriots vs New York's Giants. As my Steelers were rumbled out by Tebow and the Denver Bronco's in round one of the playoffs, I jumped on the bandwagon of the underdog Giants. Coming in to December the Giants had a pretty ordinary record of 7 wins and 7 losses. The bookies had them at 45-1 to win the superbowl. The Giants went on to win every game after and beat the league's best team for the past 5 years. Eli Manning, the captain and star quarterback had already been to the big show before and dragged his team of old veterans sprinkled with a few bright rookies to the summit of NFL's showcase game. Not that the Pats made it easy for them. 3 time superbowl MVP Tom Brady made them work until the last second of the game before they could celebrate. The Giants 4 point winners.