[theo_luddite]

No points could be awarded this weekend but we're a tad closer to when we can start handing out the last few.

Across the Pond in the CFL, two very tight games in the Canadian Egg chasing with only 3 points deciding both games.

Montreal Alouettes travelled to the bear pit that is Steel City Canada, Hamilton and came away with a 16-19 win at Tim Horton's Field. Those Tiger Cats will be licking their wounds all winter. Coffees and Doughnuts all round. I'd prefer a blueberry muffin with my coffee please Tim.

Over on the west side of the Provinces, Saskatchewan Roughriders beat British Columbia Bears by 24-21, which means the Grey Cup Final will be played in a Little House on the Prairies. A pretty impressive little house in Regina, Saskatchewan that has a capacity of 33,350 expandable to 40,000. It's highest attendance for a sporting event is 34,243 (Aug 31, 2025 vs Winnipeg Blue Bombers) whilst of other events it's 39,500 (Aug 9 or 10, 2019, The Garth Brooks Stadium Tour, y'all - estimated).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...chewan.jpg

While we're over there lets head south to Sao Paulo, Brazil and drop in on the F1 folks. It's been another weekend with a Sprint Race and a full F1 race and it's fair to say Lando Norris has made it his weekend while his team mate Piastri continues to inflict more self inflicted wounds and the door is still ajar for Crash to spoil the party.

In the Sprint race, Norris won from Antonelli, who had a great weekend too, Russell and Crash. Piastri spun out on the 5th lap (he wasn't the only one) and had a DNF, handing another 8 points to Norris and 5 to crash. Antonnelli finished 2nd and George Russell 3rd.

In the main race qualies, Crash didn't get out of Q1 .... yeah, it's been a long time since that happened. On top of that his team mate was last. Red Bull suddenly can't set a car up? Hmmm. but, but, The Racing Bulls qualified 5th and 7th. When was the last time the junior team out performed the senior team?

Rather than start 16th or worse in a car that Noddy in his pedal car would have given a race, Red Bull went for the new engine and a load of other fixes that other teams aren't allowed due to parc-fermé rules. He started from the pit lane. The advantage he had with a new engine (they lose about 5% performance each race), the help of a few safety cars/yellow flags and a few others pitting when it helped him, meant he finished 3rd behind Norris and Antonelli again. Not saying he isn't a good driver but he didn't shuffle anyone into the barriers to do this either. Piastri on the other hand was found guilty of doing this (yet again) and a 10 second penalty shuffled him down to 5th.

As a result, Lando is now 24 points ahead of his team mate, Crash is 25 points behind him. Given Piastri was all over this like a rash half-way through the season, his form in the 2nd half of the seaon is nothing short of crap. The Hamster struggled to get any kind of speed all weekend. His team mate lasted a few laps before crashing out. The Hamsters wheels completely seized up by about half-way, give or take. Ferrari clearly need to change the nuts they are feeding him.

They head to a big car park in Las Vegas in two weeks.

In stuff we ain't predicting, the Aussies stuffed England again in the RL Ashes Egg Chasing. It was (maybe) close at half-time. It wasn't by full time.
In the Autumn International Money Grab, England beat Fiji when they eventually realised passing the ball was a better idea than watching Fiji pass the ball. Scotland almost gave New Zealand a game but then lost again - see RL Ashes for the model.

Where the 'ell are you from?
I'm from Wolveramperton.
Wolver, Wolveramperton.

Special thumbs up to Wolvo born golf pro Airon Rai who beat Tommy Fleetwood in a play-off at the Ahbu Dhabi Doo Championship on the 1st play-off hole. Wouldn't recognise him if I fell over him. Doubt he ever plays the courses I do given he now lives in Florida and uses TPC at Sawgrass as his practice course. I guess the par 3 at Three Hammers won't miss him.

[theo_luddite]

SCO in with a shout of a point this weekend as Montreal go to Saskatchewan for the Grey Cup Final on Sunday.
Sunday's in sports bars in the USA are typically wall to wall NFL Egg chasing so the chances of finding the CFL Egg Chasing final on a TV somewhere, unless the bar is run by or full of Cannucks, I'd say are slim.

Golf's Race to Dubai concludes this weekend with the top 50 available golfers on the DP World Tour Championship bringing the '25 European Golf Season to a close. It starts up again at the end of the month with the Autralian PGA, in case you were wondering.

The Leaderboard in this final tournament as the 3rd round comes to a close is pretty darned tight with $10 million up for grabs. The winner is not just based on this tournament, but how you've performed over the season across 42 separate tournaments. Rory McIlroy has beeen top of the overall Leaderboard since winning The Masters way back when. Another one for next years post-it notes.



The RU Egg Chasing continues over the weekend with England v The All Blacks the pick of the weekend for those that like this kind of thing.
The MotoGP is in Valencia but that's already done and dusted for the season bar picking up the scraps.

World Cup Soccerball Qualifying continues with England looking to go unbeaten and not concede a goal, Scotland and Welsh Wales still have a chance of qualifying, though it may have to be through the play-off's. Norn Iron can't get into the top 2 of their section after Friday night's 1-0 loss to Slovakia. A 2-0 win for the Republic of Ireland over the Pork Chops means they have a muck or nettles match to come against Hungary.

[theo_luddite]

We all drew a blank in the Grey Cup Final. Saskatchewan 25-17 Montreal was the final score. A last minute Hail-Mary for Montreal was fumbled over the line to give the Roughriders the points.

4 points still up for grabs F1 and three that start next month but finish in January (Ashes Cricket, Darts and Africa Cup of Nations).
Matt Fitzpatrick won the season ending tournament in a 19th hole play-off against Rory McIlroy but 2nd was more than enough to win his 7th Race to Dubai Trophy, one behind Colin Montgomery's Order of Merit titles.

England qualified for next Summer's World Cup unbeaten and without conceding a goal, though a combination of good goalkeeping by Henderson and some poor finishing by Albania made sure of the blank again. Despite losing to Greece, Scotland still have a chance to top Group C as Denmark stumbled to a draw against Belarus, who previously hadn't picked up a point. The Jocks host Denmark in a winner takes all final game at Hampden on Tuesday., though the Danes can also win the Group with a draw. Wales and North Macedonia meet in Cardiff on Tuesday for another muck or nettles scrap for 2nd place in their Group. Belgium only need a point against pointless Liechenstein to secure top spot.

I read yesterday that the current RU Egg Chasing "Autumn International Money Grab" is going to be turned into a tournament from next year. It will be somewhat drawn out however as the "first half" of the games will be played in the Northern Hemisphere in November and the "second half" will be played in the Southern Hmisphere in June. Nothing like keeping those airmiles down, eh? It will also be played every other year so it doesn't clash with major tours and World Cups.

[theo_luddite]

Despite finishing 3rd in their Groups, Norn Iron, Sweden and Romania get a World Cup play-off spot after topping their Nations League groups.

[Lord Snooty]

They had a minute's applause at Windsor Park last night to mark 20 years since George Best died.

Twenty years! Where does the time go?

[theo_luddite]

Have to say the same Snoots. Didn't realise it was so soon after I came back from Canada.

[theo_luddite]

Gone back and removed all imgur images on this thread - whether mine or not. We can't view them anyway. Well not over here.
Whether or not you could over the pond I've no idea. imgur told us we couldn't use their site anymore and we had to cancel our accounts - which meant logging into a site we couldn't access anymore to cancel our accounts. There's no Yank like a dumb Yank when it comes to IT in my experience.

Took out a few from https://freeimage.host/ too as that was also having a glitch this afternoon. seems to be working again now though.

Anyway - the F1 is going down to the wire as were it not for a short and curly hair's width of a lump of titanium bolted to the bottom of the McLaren's last weekend in Vegas and more or less as long he was in the points this weekend in Qatar, Lando would have wrapped everything up this afternoon. Except he hasn't. Crash picked up full points in both races as McLaren were disqualified in Vegas (they say it wasn't a gamble) and the gamble they tried today to try and out guess Red Bull's tyre strategy didn't work either. From over 100 points behind in the summer, Crash is one win and another McLaren foobar from being World Champion again.

Just hook a tow bar to the back of his car you numpties. Stop over thinking this stuff.

[theo_luddite]

Points available this weekend as the F1 comes to an end that has rarely gone to the end in recent seasons - give or take a set of (bar)stewards that as good as awarded a title with Hamilton written all over to Crash a few years back.
Could it be Norris, Piastri or Verstappen? We know darned well it won't be Huddersfield Town.

Winter drawers on.

World Cup draws are on soon this evening, assuming Goldilocks the Infant Trump keeps his oar out and decides no games can be played where he doesn't want them to, which might also include Mexico and Canada. Instead of licking his b@lls, the other Infant needs to grow a pair and tell him it's FIFA's tournament, not his. They decide the stadiums, not the orange buffoon.

EFL Trophy draws tomorrow, which despite the North/South complications until the semi's this season, are likely to be far less political than the World Cup draws.

Otherwise England are making a better fist of it so far in Brisbane than they did in Perth, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement given they dropped 5 dollies today. It will at least last 3 days this time.

[theo_luddite]

The next test in Adelaide could last 4 days the way things are going, but the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne might already be meaningless.
Old Farts 2-0 Bazball, so far.

F1 points awarded to SCO and me as Lando Norris trundled home in 3rd in Abba Dabbi Doo. Despite being about 100 points adrift in his go cart at the halfway stage, Crash finally found the accelerator and sorted his gear box and won plenty of the races in the 2nd half of the season to keep Lando honest. Lando's team mate, Oscar Piastri, was also well in front at half term but somehow or another his McLaren crew seemingly put the anchors on him in the 2nd half of the season. There's politics and there's F1 politics. Ho Hum.

Crash's boss, for many a year, Christian Horner, finally didn't get what he really, really wanted, to keep his job, as he was moved on from head of Red Bull after rumours of him being put on the naughty step for misappropriate behaviour (to put it mildly). Don't think he or Mrs. Ginger Spice will struggle to pay for their next sandwich though if I'm honest.

The Hamster's move to Ferrari looked like it could be paved with gold trimmed prancing horses when he won an early Sprint Race, but then they took his engine out and gave him a pedal car to drive instead. On more than a few embarassing occassions he didn't get out of Q1, let alone a decent place in Q3. His team mate had slightly faster pedals over the season but they have rarely looked like the Red Scuderia of old this season.

So we're left with the Darts and The Africa Cup of Nations to sort out the winner. That and try and work out where SHEP has disappeared to.

---

It's also fair to say that even if I catch him, SHEP's still gonna win on the decider.

You out there SHEP?