A mix of league and cup games for the last weekend of March.

Gamball:
Norwich - WBA

Others:
Fulham - Crystal Palace
Brighton - Nottingham Forest
Hull - Luton
Cardiff - Sheff Wed
Portsmouth - Blackburn
Stoke - QPR
Charlton - Huddersfield
Walsall - Wimbledon
Bournemouth - Man City

Crawley Town have parted company with manager Rob Elliot with the club 12 points adrift of safety in League One.

The former Gateshead manager, 38, took over at Broadfield Stadium in October after Scott Lindsey left to join League Two MK Dons.

Ex-Newcastle goalkeeper Elliot only won six of his 33 matches in charge of the Reds, losing 19.

He leaves the club 22nd in the league, with relegation looming in their first season back in the third tier.

Crawley said Louis Storey would step up as interim head coach,, external with Anthony Sweeney as interim assistant head coach.

"The club would like to thank Rob for all of his efforts during his time at the Broadfield Stadium and wish him all the best for the future," Crawley said in a statement.

Storey's first match in charge will be at home to Bristol Rovers on Saturday.

Group A

Twerton 23
Minizin 12
Zinman 7
Themaclad 5
A.A.A. 5
Amelia 4

Above average week for the group as a whole, but a season’s best for one player, Twerton!! For the second week in a row he tops the weekly table but this week he crushed the rest of the players and set a personal season high score of 23. He scored on 7 games including 3 CSs, he got a CR on the Gamball and Bonus and had he not failed to score on the scoreball he would have equaled the season high score in Group A!! Minizin was 2nd and the only other player to get into double figures. He needed this to arrest his drop in recent weeks.

Zinman was 3rd with 7 points, closely followed by Themaclad and AAA with 5 points. All three missed the Gamball but at least managed to score on the Bonus with Zin getting a max. Unfortunately they managed virtually nothing else!! Amelia actually scored on more games than all of them but she missed on all her balls to keep her score down at 4 points.

280 Themaclad
264 Twerton
260 Zinman
252 Minizin
195 A.A.A.
193 Amelia

Twerton’s excellent week sees him move above Zinman and into second place, he is 16 points behind Themaclad. Zinman is just 4 points behind Twerton with Minizin 8 further points behind. These 4 are all fighting for playoff spaces and Themaclad is not quite there yet despite being leader for the vast majority of the season.


Group B

BaggieOne 14
Snooty 14
Stairs 10
BBB 9
SCO 8
Lady Jane 7
Derby 7

A better week for Group B, largely down to good ball play - 35 points from the balls represents the 2nd best return this season. Just one failure on the bonus - no prizes for guessing who that was - and 4 players scoring on the gamball.

something of a role reversal in the week's table with the seasons 2 worst performers sharing top spot with 14 points. BaggieOne scored on all the balls for just the 2nd time while Snooty was the only player to get 5 correct predictions but was prevented from securing first place on his own by failing to turn any of those 5 into correct scores. This is something of a theme for Snooty - he has the lowest percentage of correct scores to results in the group - just 25% compared to Lady Jane at 36%.
Not much between the rest. Stairs crept into double figures in 3rd place - he matched B1's results/scores but was held back by his miss on the gamball. SCo only scored on 2 games but it makes a difference when your 1 correct score is the bonus. Lady Jane matched SCO but without having her correct score as the bonus while Derby's only 2 correct results would normally have seen him flirting with a negative score, but as those 2 were his gamball and bonus, he wasn't too far behind the pack.


250 Lady Jane
241 SCO
228 Derby
228 Stairs
211 BBB
196 Snooty
170 BaggieOne

As seems to be the case every week, the only positional change involves Derby and Stairs with Stairs climbing back level with Derby in 3rd place. The only other notable event sees Lady Jane hitting the 250 point mark.

So we have the final international break this week so everyone should rest up and get ready for the final push to the play offs. There are 4 weeks left so still a ton of points left to be won so a lot can still change. Here are the current standings:

League Leaders (Bye in first round)
Themaclad - 280 - 16 points ahead of Twerton.
Lady Jane - 250 - 9 points ahead of SCO.

Play off places
Twerton - 264
Zinman - 260
Minizin - 252
SCO - 241

The Chasing Pack
Derby - 228 - 13 points off the PO spots
Stairs - 228 - 13 points off the PO spots

The Also Rans
BBB - 211
Snooty - 196
AAA - 195
Amelia - 193
BaggieOne - 170

So Themaclad and Lady Jane have both led for ages in their respective leagues, but both are now potentially catchable by those just behind them, so all still to play for. SCO is slowly catching the rest of the players in the top 3 PO spots but at the same time is only 13 points ahead of Derby and Stairs so is by no means secure yet.

The rest seem to be out of it at this point but with 188 points still up for grabs it’s possible for anyone to do it. Realistically someone from this group is going to need to score 20+ points per week for the last 4 weeks to close the gap.

Cheers
Zin & SCO

Notts C 2-1 Crewe
Wimbledon 3-0 Barrow
Bradford 1-1 Colchester
Carlisle 0-0 Bromley
Cheltenham 1-0 MKDons
Chesterfield 3-1 Harrogate
Fleetwood 1-2 Tranmere
Gillingham 1-1 Walsall
Grimsby 2-0 Newport
Port Vale 3-1 Morecambe
Swindon 3-2 Accrington

Preston North End acknowledges the charges brought against Milutin Osmajić by The FA following last month’s Sky Bet Championship fixture against Burnley.


Milutin continues to strongly deny the allegations of the use of abusive language with reference to colour and/or race and will provide an official response to The FA charges in due course.

Until such a time where the case has been concluded, the club will be making no further comment.

The charge sheet says alleged, cannot see how they can prove this, but smell a stitch up, think the EFL have an agenda against us, I know of no other club who has been fined for complaints about what they sang.

Now that my curling is finished for the season, I'll have more time to do a more comprehensive report on the major World Championships. The World Women's event, as previously promoted by theo luddite, is taking place in Uijeongbu, Korea, from Saturday 15 March to Sunday 23 March. There are 13 teams - perfectly sensible if you represent a vested interest - who play each other from 15 March to 21 March, followed by qualifying games and Semi-finals on Saturday 22 March - 3rd place plays 6th and 4th place plays 5th with 1st and 2nd places being thrust straight into the Semi-finals. The Medal Games will be played on Sunday 23 March.

Scotland represent the Home Nations and the team consists of (from left to right) Fay Henderson (Alternate), Sophie Jackson (Lead), Sophie Sinclair (Second), Jennifer Dodds (Third) and Rebecca Morrison (Fourth). Sophie J will skip and call the shots, except for her own stones, when Rebecca does the needful.


Scotland have been involved in 3 very tight games so far. They beat Canada by 8-7 on Saturday night, scoring 3 shots in the last end, then lost 7-8 at the last end against Norway on Sunday morning. An even tighter game followed with the Scots forcing an extra end against Korea with 2 shots in the 10th end. After a tense extra end, they lost out by 4 shots to 5.

Tomorrow Scotland play Italy at midnight (UK time) and Switzerland at 10.00. That's 09.00 and 19.00 Korean time. The Koreans have stayed on the same time zone since 1988, as being pragmatic and sensible people, they have realised that Daylight Saving Time in summer doesn't make the slightest difference to saving (or expending) any daylight. Not like us, who have abandoned the absurd Imperial notion that we standardised GMT for the benefit of the world. Now we're apparently using UTC - I never knew either - having joined the Atomic Age in 1967. However I digress. Back to the future (in curling terms).

2 points for correct result
4 points for correct score
2 points for each correct scorer
Correct joker doubles your score   (correct score on a joker would give you 8 points)
Wrong joker result gives you minus 2
Correct Badger gives you 2 points

The prize for winning the league is one rep point.

Cup games: In the event of a draw, it's half the points if you've predicted a draw when it gets to 90 mins and the full points if it's still a draw after extra time. Half the points will be awarded for correctly predicting the winner of the match if it goes to penalties. However, if you do predict a draw and it's a match that won't be going to a replay, you can get a possible extra point by stating which of the two teams you think will eventually win.

Random score generator: I will be using the random score generator again for those who miss predicting, so we shouldn't get some people too far behind that after missing a couple of weeks they lose all interest, because I know it's not easy getting on here every week.
To be fair to everybody, this is going to be like, say if three people in one week miss their predictions, the first one in the table will be given all 0-0, the second one down the line will get 1-0 and the third will get 0-1 and so on, like if there's four missing the 4th will get 1-1, then 5th 2-1, 6th 1-2. and if there are so many missing, might as well pack in.
And if you miss two weeks on the trot, I'll stop until you come back on again. Not doing it for half a season like I did t'other year.  


At the end of the season, the winner of group 2 and the bottom of group 1 will swap places in what is commonly known as "promotion" and "relegation". It's something that most football fans will be familiar with, unless you're a fan of Liverpool or Arsenal or one of those other fashionable clubs.

The second placed player in group 2 will then have a play off with the player who finishes second from the bottom in group 1 to decide whether they will be going up, down or staying where they are.

We're going to have two seasons in one though, just to try and make it a bit more interesting and not so long drawn out. The first season will end on the Boxing Day fixtures, with the play offs being on the dates of the Twixtmas fixtures and the NYD fixtures.

The second season will start the following week, which is usually the FA Cup 3rd round, finishing on the last game of the League One season. Then another period of relegation/promotion play off games, taking in such fixtures as the EFL play offs, FA Cup Final, UEFA finals and such like.

Each group will have it's own set of fixtures. Both groups will have the Town games, with scorers to predict as before. Then it will be a split of League One fixtures and bonus matches, hopefully around ten, eleven or twelve games per Matchday.

The random badger is restricted to three goal scorers in any of the fixtures in your group.

Here's how that will appear at the end of the fixture list. All you have to do is fill in the blanks.......


*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***

Any of those will score two points if correct. No minus points for getting it wrong.

Postponed matches will only count if the match is re-played before the next Matchday is under way. Abandoned matches will be awarded half the points for the score at the time of abandonment, so 1 point if you have the correct result, 2 points if you have the correct score.

Substitute or scorer in one of the Town games:- These will be only be allowed if you change them before the match involved has kicked off.

Prediction League Archive: https://www.sportsbabble.co.uk/showthread.php?tid=12830



Division One table after Matchday 10:

1. neonfoxinthebox = 176 pts
   
2. jjamez = 161 pts
   
3. Baggiebob(BBB) = 150 pts
   
4. themaclad = 147 pts
   
5. Lord Snooty = 138 pts
   
6. St Charles Owl = 128 pts
   

1. ritchiebaby = 182 pts
   
2. theo_luddite = 159 pts
   
3. Devongone = 153 pts
   
4. SHEP_HTAFC = 147 pts
   
5. Amelia Chaffinch = 123 pts
   
6. WakeyTerrier = 109 pts
   

UEFA Nations League Play Offs 1st leg:
Thursday 20th March:
Greece v Scotland

2nd leg on Sunday:
Scotland v Greece (17:00)

World Cup qualifiers:
Friday 21st March:
England v Albania

Saturday 22nd March:
Wales v Kazakhstan (19:45)

Monday 24th March:
England v Latvia

Tuesday 25th March:
North Macedonia v Wales

International friendlies:
Friday:
Northern Ireland v Switzerland

Tuesday:
Sweden v Northern Ireland (18:00)

Saturday:
League One:
Barnsley v Cambridge United
Crawley Town v Bristol Rovers
Lincoln City v Exeter City
Northampton Town v Blackpool
Peterborough United v Charlton Athletic
Wrexham v Stockport County

League Two:
Chesterfield v Harrogate Town


*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***

THE MATCH

SUNDAY 16TH FEBRUARY KO 12:30PM

v

LAST MATCH



We made it back to back away wins as we came from 2-0 down to beat Norwich. The Canaries took the lead early when Sainz fired in after a flick by Slimane. It was 2-0 twenty minutes later when they waltzed through our defence and Crnac side-footed in from 8 yards. Not looking good at HT. But DR made a few changes and that seemed to do the trick alongside some dodgy Norwich defending. It was Ihiekwe who got us back in the game following a corner, the ball going in slow motion. Another cross got us level as Norwich couldn't clear the ball and Windass fired in. The comeback was complete when Windass got down the right and crossed for Gassama to score from close range. We saw the game out fairly comfortably and passed the 50 point mark at the same time.

DEJPHON CHANSIRI, GET OUT OF OUR CLUB    

THE MATCH



Next up and the little matter of the 2nd Steel city derby of the season. The Blunts are having a very good season and currently lie in 2nd place with a very good chance of the automatics, just 2 points off Leeds but only 2 points ahead of Burnley in 3rd place. It is going to be a very interesting finish to the season and we would love to put a spanner in the works on there promotion charge. They are of course managed by Chris Wilder (one of there own of course) and has been in charge since December 2023 and has a 42.4% win rate since taking over. There leading scorers are Cannon and Campbell with 9 goals each although Cannon scored most of those for Stoke

DEJPHON CHANSIRI, GET OUT OF OUR CLUB    

ALL TIME H2H

OWLS 48
PIGS 50
DRAW 47

CURRENT FORM

OWLS  W W L L L W                                                                      

PIGS D W W L W W    

EFL STOOGES

DOES IT MATTER THERE ALL CORRUPT  

ANDREW KITCHEN
Blake Antrobus and Daniel Leach
Fourth Official: Josh Smith

THE TEAM

Beadle
Iorfa Ihiekwe M Lowe Hatsuse
Bannan Charles
Gasama Windass Ingelsson
Pato

SCORE & SCORER (HOME TEAM SCORE FIRST)

1-1 Gassama

WEDNESDAYS FIRT GOAL TIME

26

ATTENDANCE

N/A (ITS A SELLOUT)

BML LEAGUE

Imre 27
SCO 22
Maddix 22
Washington 20
Wereham 14

BMPL

Stateside 17
Owlkev 13
Southey 12
Pei 8

OTHER GAMES OF MILD INTEREST

Arsenal v Chelsea
Fulham v Tottenham
Leicester City v Manchester United
Celtic v Rangers
Dundee Utd v Dundee

HHAHH

THE MUPPETT LEAGUE




KATE BECKINSALE TRIBUTE PIC

Crewe 2-1 Doncaster
Swindon 3-2 Cheltenham
Accrington 1-0 Gillingham
Bradford 3-0 Tranmere
Carlisle 1-2 Wimbledon
Colchester 1-1 Fleetwood
Grimsby 1-1 Salford
Morecambe 0-2 Barrow
Newport 1-0 Harrogate
Notts C 1-2 Chesterfield
Port Vale 2-2 MKDons