A Riddle

Why did the chicken cross the football field?

(The answer is in comments.)

Fantasy Queensland

The thing to do here in introduction is to apologise for not writing for so long. Yup.

The bad news is that as this A-Leage thing kicks off again I have realised that work commitments will prevent me from seeing many games at all. I'll be able to see the Saturday night ones and the late Sunday night ones. So today's game between Roar and Phoenix was the first true season Roar game I've missed for two years or so.

It's good to see a few bloggers spark up, but fewer seem active so far (I can hardly be saying this self-righteously). I'll be following the A-League media closely, and it's good to hear the voices beyond the mainstream.

Now the Roar has these new players. To be honest I'd still have to go to the web page to remember their names but they sound hopeful and, ahem... hopefully they'll be great. One of them popped a goal earlier today. The'Roar were tipped to lose that match so maybe the draw was good, and I'm sure Frank will say that, "with the two home games to follow" and all that. Let's say in relative ignorance I'm cautiously optimistic about the Roar's chances. I agree with Ed Vegas's critique of Tony's pre-season review, let's say, for similar hopelessly partisan reasons.

And my fantasy team is up, in both Tony's league (details in the aforelinked post) and Peter and Eric's, and it has a theme. It is, as much as possible within the rules, a Queensland State of Origin Team.

My main problem was I could only choose four Roar players, and most A-League players from Queensland, unsurprisingly, play for the Roar.

In the mid-field I have Matty McKay of course, as captain. In the full vision of this program it is Frank Farina and Matty McKay who put up the challenge, to NSW and Victoria. It would be a home and away round-robbin with the winner taking all, played over a four week period of the off-season.

I'm getting my description of my fantasy league team, which has all sorts of compromises because of the rules, with the real vision behind it. To carry on with the latter the idea would be that any A-League or Youth league players could be called into the team. Internationals from the home state would be completely up to the club to negotiate for (good luck to them) but there would be no salary cap to do so. The organising clubs would naturally be Queensland Roar, Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory.

The overall philosophy of the idea is that it is a short tournament that could get a mass following in a concentrated way hence raising revenue and attracting people to the game, in a uniquely Australian way. There's no reason why South Australia, WA or even New Zealand could not have teams in such a competition, except firstly that I'm not sure if they'd find enough home-state bred ploayers in the A-League to field, say, 16 including 2 goal keepers, and secondly because as far as I'm concerned the real contest is between Queensland and NSW and I have no good excuse to leave Victoria out.

Clint Bolton (SFC)

Andrew Packer (QR) - Jon McKain (WP) - Karl Dodd (WP) - Michael Thwaite (MV)

Zullo (QR) - McKay (QR) - Steve Corica (QR) - David Dodd (QR) - Robbie Kruse (QR)

Dario Vidocic (on the bench in Germany) - Tahj Minniecon (QR)

On the bench I've got keeper Griffin McMaster (QR), Ben Griffin (QR), James Downey (PG), Chris Grossman (QR) and Tim Smits (QR).

But for the Foxsports Fantasy League you can only have four Roar players, and are restricted as to which positions you can place only 12 players in to, so I've done my best within the rules, and have only had to draft one defender in to complete my team. If will not be competitive naturally, because it is constructed so irrationally, but I'd be keen to see someone similarly construct a NSW or Victoria fantasy league team for some real competition.

Because as everybody universally knows, Queenslanders are better.