By Ballagher
April 8 2003

Cast your minds back to earlier this season. Did you pick Saints, Tigers, Scarlets, Perp, Munster, BOPB, Leinster or Toulouse or opt for Sale, Glous and Calvinsano. Ballagher has been been burning the midnight oil working out your prediction permutations.

As the 2002/2003 Heineken Cup, the jewel of northern hemisphere club rugby, dips in and out of your weekly diaries, I thought it time to update you on our HC prediction competition.  First of all, as it’s so long since those entries were posted, here’s a quick reminder of what you had to do and how the scoring works.  (For those who can remember how it worked last year, you can skip over the next bit – it’s exactly the same.)

Entries

Everyone had to select the following:

6 x Group Winners
2 x Best Runners Up
(These eight teams form the quarter finalists)
4 x Semi Finalists
2 x Finalists
1 x Winners

And finally as a tiebreaker your estimate of the final attendance.  (This last part is only if there is a tie at the end of the competition.  In which case the person whose predicted final attendance figure is nearest to the official declared attendance will be our winner.)

Scoring

The scoring is as follows:

For each quarter finalist you predict correctly 2 points.
For each semi finalist 4 points.
For each finalist 6 points.
For the winner 10 points.

League table

Obviously the only result that really matters is the one at the end of the competition but what we’re going to do is, after each stage, work out the maximum number of points you can still get.  The maximum for a completely accurate prediction is 54 points.

So it’s a bit unconventional but you all start with maximum points (err … well all but the person, who shall remain nameless, that picked 2 sides as both group winners and best runners-up).  As the HC progresses you lose points.

After the pool stage

So here are the standings now that the quarter-finalists are known.  I’ll leave most of the comment to yourselves but I will say just a few things.

Only one person fell on his sword rather than secure points.  (In other words only one of us didn’t back Leicester to get through the pool stage.)  It’s not for me to say who that is but, as a clue, he posts a lot on the message board.

I would obviously have done a lot better but, conscious that my winning the competition would cast doubt on the fairness of it all, I deliberately backed a load of no-hopers.  (And if you believe that then …)

Finally, can I be the first to say well done (so far) to Adam, Jamie and Shaddo.  At the other end of the table, now’s not the time for back-biting but (with the benefit of hindsight) that Montferrand-Gloucester final was a bad call!

Anyway, here’s the table.

Position	Name	Points
1=	Adam Reynolds	52
1=	Jamie Taylor	52
1=	Shaddo	52
4=	Kerry Tobin	50
4=	Edward Lovelock	50
4=	Hippo	50
4=	Ross	50
8=	Craig the Ballboy	48
8=	Daimon	48
8=	Large	48
8=	Rich Joe's Dad	48
8=	Sea Bass	48
8=	Simon Timms	48
8=	Tightheed	48
8=	Chris Marshall	48
16=	Carol	46
16=	Chris Parr	46
16=	Dan Cooper	46
16=	David Percy	46
16=	Gareth Hughes	46
16=	Jim Taylor	46
16=	Lord Stephen	46
16=	Markskaaa	46
16=	Smurfomatic	46
16=	Tim Empson	46
16=	Philip Knighton	46
16=	Well Saint	46
28=	Chris Hoddle	44
28=	Ian Morris	44
28=	Jack	44
28=	Weeble	44
28=	Saint Andrew	44
28=	Saint Claire	44
28=	Stephen Edwards	44
28=	Tom Harris	44
28=	Tom Howell	44
37=	West Mids Saint	42
37=	Ernie	42
39=	Carl Furness	40
39=	Stockers	40
39=	Abbers	40
39=	Amy Harrison	40
39=	Chris the Ed	40
39=	LOM	40
39=	Rob Morgan	40
46=	Mark Hazell	38
46=	Sam Wigg	38
46=	David Lloyd	38
46=	TaG	38
50	Ajack	36
51	Dropgoal	34
52=	Ballagher	32
52=	Ben Dover	32
54=	Eddie Baggott	30
54=	Sir Henry	30
56=	Amy Battison	28
56=	Maverick	28
58	Terry Wright	26
59	Hil	22
60	Clarkey	20
61	Craig Holmes	16

Ballagher


.