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Sheep - Season 11 - Round 1 - Scores Apologies abou the table format but I am on a mac today and I'll fix it once I get home. As far as first rounds go that was very interesting, @Bluewolf who was one of the last few to submit his answers in leads the pack and what a slim lead it is. @CaaC (John), @DeadLinesman, @Dr. Gonzo and @Pyfish are all in close second with @Lucas not far behind either. Important Notes: Some sheep feel very strongly about VAR who would have guessed Imran Khan was the most popular political celebrity who used to be a sports-person The sheep chose Archery as their comeptitive sport at the olmypics. What's odd is that they also have a plethora of choice in alcoholic beverages from the other question about a sponsor who also makes alcohol. Archery and Alcohol mixed is quite the fun time for anyone watching event. We move onto the next round now and will we see an upset at the top? Who knows. Note: Can someone from the admin team please pin this post to the top of the sub-forum group? Thank you.

RESULTS @nudge's masterplan paid off as they are now in Bundesliga with Bayern after their win in the cup. @CaaC (John) picked up 2 wins in 2 since the the last results, putting him in a strong position to chase down @Stan at the top of the table who won with Leeds at the weekend too. @londonerlilie steps into the top flight as they move to Manchester City. @Coma and @Tommy decided to part ways rather than stick together with the former losing their next game and joining Greuther Furth, and the latter going on to win their game and remaining with Kaiserslautern. @RandoEFC remains stuck in the U21 system but moves to Arsenal's U21 team - with opportunities to play league teams coming up again soon. @Rucksackfranzose moves to another lower league team, this time joining Vilzing. @Viva la FCB remains the only player to have not lost a game so far this season as he continues a great run with St Pauli. @Bluewolf grabbed a win with Derby for a vital 3 points to move out of the bottom three. @Storts moves to Gillingham. @Lucas is the only player with a choice to make - Morecambe or Swindon. The league table is starting to balance out a bit now so we can see who is truly having a good or bad season. And here are the next set of fixtures for all.

Week 8 Results Plymouth 6-2 Norwich St Mirren 1-0 Hearts Istanbul Basaksehir 1-2 Galatasaray Lazio 1-1 Monza Real Salt Lake 2-1 Vancouver Melbourne City 1-2 Sydney FC Ajax 0-3 Feyenoord* Anderlecht 1-1 Club Brugge Atletico Madrid 3-1 Real Madrid PSG 4-0 Marseille Round-up Some big derbies and rivalries to contend with in Week 8, especially on Sunday where we had the final 5 games all hotly-contested. One of which is the one in Netherlands, where Ajax vs Feyenoord was abandoned. I have decided to count this as a 3-0 Feyenoord win even though the remainder of the match continues tomorrow. All that being said, the highest score came from @nawoo who scored 14 points, which takes him into 3rd and is now only 1 point behind 2nd place. Myself, @Bluebird Hewitt and @CaaC (John) all scored 12 points, with the latter being the first to top 100 points and our resident Welshman climbing one place as a result. @Pyfish's mission to rise up from the foot of the table is one step closer as he outscores @Viva la FCB by two points.

edit: bit long. Summary: Left second job in 6 months. New job = good. Never updated this interesting year. As previously mentioned in the thread I gave up a permanent (basically lifetime gig) position at end of last year due to outright bullying and nepotism, to move to a 12 month contract at another school. Which started well… was given literacy (lol) leadership opportunities through a range of amazing professional learning. However as the weeks ticked along, the more and more shambolic the place is. It’s in a huge transition and they have a lot of high end behaviours. Easily the toughest school behaviour wise I’ve seen. My particular class was chaotic. So many issues. So sad, and so underfunded. Honestly out of the 24 students I had identified at least half with a difficulty or learning disability. The behaviours were intense, I was told to lock out students, a student was hitting teachers (never me but had a lot thrown at me) and these poor kids are only…6. Anyway, having tried to raise points about certain dynamics in the class the support system was quite shitty tbh. Parents in their droves complained to the principal about behaviours (I urged them to talk to leadership), and eventually they found an education assistant to help most days. Didn’t help, I ended up trying so many things. It was seriously draining. Realising this was a pattern across the school I applied elsewhere. I managed to win an interview and subsequently a position in the private sector at an incredibly high performing school. I told my school at the time of this news and they said that’s great etc etc and then 3 hours later made the decision to pull me from my class. I ended up taking a week stress leave as this was quite a fucked thing to do. I was then the “relief” and was in one of the other most challenging classes for a couple of days a week for the last 4 weeks of the term. The teacher that took over my initial class is now already leaving. She’s more experienced and has been at the tough school for years… The behaviour support for this year four class? A tick chart and lollies and chocolates if these students stay in the room, don’t fight etc. fucking stupid systems. Anyway, loving the new job. Long hours and on the other side of the city, and with after school expectations. Very different. But sometimes you’ve got to move and take risks!

So, a little work update, it's a bit long but ill condense it as much as possible. In Jan this year I had a weird run-in with my manager at work about how we're building software that we peddle to customers that is bug-ridden to the point where it's almost impossible to change it to become more stable without gutting the entire system piece by piece and rebuilding it. I was given a lot of excuses about why it was the way it is and sadly I have a great bullshit meter that doesn't allow me to hear that kind of nonsense. I talked to a lot of folks at work about what it would take to make it better, presented a case for it and then once again got told it would be too hard and would yield absolutely no benefit to the customer. I then of course made the argument that I wasn't just talking about the customer but about us as a company and how being ready to migrate to newer tech was the real goal here which ultimately serves our customers better. Fast forward to April this year and I heard the most shocking thing in the world from someone else who was a higher-up and that was this verbatim "we don't care about the fact that the system is broken in certain areas". I couldn't control myself and started laughing and said that's quite the statement, didn't go down too well and in my defense, I was laughing because I thought it was the most ludicrous thing I have heard in my 25 years in this industry. In August, I decided I had had enough and told them I was resigning. According to laws here, you have to spend 60 days prior to exit to help shore up whatever you need to. Needless to say, I am officially out of tech now for the next 30 days during which I plan to surf and also do some trekking haha. It's a weird feeling because I have been doing this since I was 17 and to disassociate from it without a gameplan for the next step feels a bit weird but so far, it's only been 1 day, and I honestly haven't thought about tech at all during that period.

I reckon we should combine the two...

Ah yes, bows and arrows against speedos, I wonder who will win this one...

And that's it for round 1, I am going to go tally the scores and put up the leaderboard post now. Next round will start tomorrow, and I'll be posting the questions here.

7. How many rectangles does a football pitch have? Seven - 9 Stan Caac John Dr. Gonzo Pyfish Lucas Beelzebub Deadlinesman Bluewolf Spike Five - 1 Nudge Four - 1 Tommy

@Tommy, @Viva la FCB, @Stan, @Coma, @Michael, @Bluewolf, @nawoo, @6666 Your weekly reminder!

Not just the duck that was peking out then.

The contrast between our predictions in this league and those in the 2.Liga is striking. The participant with the least points would have been on shared second spot in the 2.Liga prediction league with that amount. and the other prediction league's matchday winner Stan finished on shared 4th spot although he scored 2 points more in this league. Matchday 5 1) Tommy 15 points 2) Michael 11 points 3) Viva la FCB 10 points 4) Rucksackfranzose 9 points 4) Stan 9 points 6) CaaC(John) 8 points 6) Coma 8 points 8- Bluewolf 6 points 8- nawoo 6 points 10) 6666 5 points Considering we're only 5 matchdays in Tommy's 9 points lead is quite remarkable. Table after 5 matchdays 1) @Tommy 47 points 2) @Viva la FCB 38 points 3) @Stan 36 points 4) @Coma 35 points 4) @Michael 35 points 6) @Bluewolf 32 points 6) @nawoo 32 points 8- @CaaC (John) 30 points 8- Rucksackfranzose 30 points 10) @6666 27 points

I witnessed this on social media this morning, on my phone so definitely first hand

In contrast to the last one this matchday has been very good pointwise for our standards. Matchday 8 1) CaaC (John) 13 points 1) Viva la FCB 13 points 3) Coma 9 points 4) Rucksackfranzose 8 points 5) Bluewolf 6 points 5) nawoo 6 points 5) Stan 6 points 8- Michael 4 points 9) Tommy 2 points The table was considerably shaken up. Table after 8 matchdays 1) Rucksackfranzose 51 points 2) @Viva la FCB 50 points 3) @Michael 46 points 4) @CaaC (John) 45 points 4) @Tommy 45 points 6) @Coma 43 points 6) @Stan 43 points 8- @nawoo 42 points 9) @Bluewolf 38 points 10) @londonerlilie 17 points

They love a good apology don't they? I was sat at my mate's chatting and not even paying full attention to the game. The Diaz goal looked close, but if I had to pick then I'd definitely have said it was onside. But it was close enough that I wouldn't have been baffled by some slightly iffy line drawing that said it was offside because we've seen that enough times. What was absolutely baffling to me was how quickly they looked at it and shrugged it off without even broadcasting any of the lines they usually draw. If I can sit there and think wait a minute this is going to be close from the still image they showed on the broadcast and the majority of viewers are saying the same then it absolutely perplexes me that the VAR officials gave it such a cursory look and just moved on. I don't buy into the corruption or conspiracy theories, the only logic I can apply to it is that maybe they didn't want to intervene again having already overturned one call in such a big match but that is no excuse whatsoever. I don't know what they can really do other than get good at officiating and using VAR because if you take it away again you just go back to the same problem we had before where even more glaring errors get made. You can't expect perfection from the officials but you can expect them not to be making such horrifically bad mistakes in the 4th or 5th year of using this technology that it requires them to make a public apology after the game.

This ref is bent as fuck

I think that integrity went some time ago in all honesty.

Russell Martin. Managerial genius.

Mad they didn't even show the lines for the Diaz one. Looked well onside to me

The integrity of the PL as a sporting competition is quite possibly compromised.

What a great day of footy. Just fucking win Liverpool to top it off

Times up Erik. I’m sorry but you’ve spent half a billion on shite and can’t build a team for shit. No style, no identity, nothing. This can’t continue.

My condolences. I'm revoking the archery club invitation lol

Happy birthday, @Coma!

Top!!! That was a surprise.. I see @nudge rushing in early with her homework and an apple for teacher really paid off then..

That's just a leaked video of @DeadLinesman's unsuccessful trial to join our archery team. Shouldn't you be doing some little mermaid practice or something anyway?

Eberl's career at Leipzig:

10. The sheep have decided to form a team to play one of the following sports as a team sport which one did they pick from the following: (Archery/Synchronized Swimming/Gymnastics) Synchronised Swimming - 5 Stan Dr. Gonzo Pyfish Deadlinesman Spike Archery - 6 Caac John Tommy Lucas Beelzebub Nudge (we're too cool for the other two) Bluewolf

9. Besides China, name a country that won the most mens-doubles badminton gold medals. South Korea - 4 Dr. Gonzo Caac John Deadlinesman Spike United Kingdom - 1 Stan Taiwan - 1 Tommy USA - 1 Pyfish Indonesia - 1 Lucas Malaysia - 1 Beelzebub Japan - 1 Nudge Denmark - 1 Bluewolf

8. Name a country who has won a gold medal in curling just once. (Best guess) Great Britain - 4 Dr. Gonzo Pyfish Bluewolf Spike France - 1 Stan Italy - 1 Caac John Canada - 1 Tommy USA - 1 Lucas Norway - 1 Beelzebub Finland - 1 Nudge Scotland - 1 Deadlinesman

6. Name a famous sports sponsor company that makes alcoholic beverages Heineken - 4 Caac John Lucas Nudge Bluewolf Carlsberg - 3 Dr. Gonzo Pyfish Spike Chang - 1 Stan Budweiser - 1 Tommy Duff - 1 Beelzebub Castlemaine 4x - 1 Deadlinesman

5. Name a sports-person who is now in politics. Imran Khan - 4 Caac John Nudge Deadlinesman Spike George Weah - 3 Stan Pyfish Lucas Vitali Klitschko - 1 Dr. Gonzo Caitlyn Jenner - 1 Tommy Romario - 1 Beelzebub Sebastian Coe - 1 Bluewolf

4. Name a popular sport that is not an olympic sport yet Cricket - 8 Stan Caac John Pyfish Dr. Gonzo Lucas Beelzebub Deadlinesman Bluewolf Darts - 1 Tommy MMA - 1 Nudge American Football - 1 Spike

3. How many referees are there in total for a modern football match? (Possibly the most interesting answer list of this round) 5: Referee, 2 assistant referees, 4th official, VAR official - 5 Dr. Gonzo Pyfish Beelzebub Deadlinesman Bluewolf Four - 3 Tommy Lucas Nudge (Fuck VAR) Seven - 1 Spike 6 (referee, 2 assistant, 4th official, 2 VAR). - 1 Stan 3 - 1 Caac John

2. Name a sport that was invented in Brazil. Jujitsu (how the fuck do you spell that!?) / Jiu Jitsu - 3 Stan Beelzebub Deadlinesman (only guy to spell it right) Beach Soccer - 3 Caac John Lucas Bluewolf Capoeira - 3 Tommy Nudge Spike Futsal - 1 Dr. Gonzo Footvolley - 1 Pyfish

Stan @CaaC (John) @Dr. Gonzo @DeadLinesman @Spike @Pyfish @nudge @Beelzebub @Tommy @Lucas @Bluewolf Sheep - Season 11 - Sports - Round 1 - Miscellaneous - Answers So, I wasn't expecting what happened in this round but its good. on with the answers. 1. Name a sport that is played with three people on a team? Boules/Bowls - 2 Pyfish Lucas Beach volleyball - 1 Stan Lawn Green Bowling - 1 Caac John Street Basketball - 1 Tommy Torball - 1 Dr. Gonzo Relay Race - 1 Beelzebub 3x3 Basketball - 1 Nudge Basketball - 1 Bluewolf F1 (2 drives and standby) - 1 Deadlinesman 3-way tag team match (WWE) - 1 Spike Now, there were so many basketball variations in this one I thought really hard but in the end they really are all unique on their own. Sorry.

Well, wasn't too clever to announce it now, since Alonso has a contract til 2026 at Leverkusen and I would take them to the cleaners financially after them being that disrespectful.

@Tommy, @Michael, @Stan, @Viva la FCB, @nawoo, @Coma, @Bluewolf, @londonerlilie Your weekly reminder!

when I went to open the window to get even clearer pictures it flew away.

WEEK 8 - UPTURN AND THE BIGGEST WIN YET We're back in the green this week but it's mainly thanks to one particular member which shall be covered later. The hint is it isn't me. We have a new leader this week in the form of @Machado who seems to favour calculated safe picks. Sporting took their time to bag in their trip to Austria but did end up scoring twice in a late turnaround win. Bayern hit twice in the space of four minutes to pay out the original leg of the bet, to take home a £7.64 profit and put himself back in the green. A congratulations must go to @CaaC (John) for this weeks effort though. He's gone a little more conservative in recent weeks rather than picking audatious upset scorelines and instead just picking an underdog to go with a favourite. I'll mention again that you get one bet a week, one £10 bet and you use it on one or two selections, rather than two £5 bets - luckily there's not yet been any issue as you've either won on both or lost on both, but this week for example your two selections will be put into a £10 double rather than two sets of £5. This may cost you on another week, however this week Everton's win at Brentford contributed to the season's biggest win yet, and the same result was the single biggest odds winner to pay out this season as they turned in a surprise 1-3 victory. Hibs made no mistake in their leg of the bet either, beating St Johnstone 2-0 at home. Should you have done two £5 bets on these outcomes, you would be £19.40 up rather than the £57.12 you are! @Stan had built up a bit of profit meaning that he stays in the green despite falling to a second straight loss this weekend. Interested to hear the rationale behind the games you're going for on these - are they just random or is there a reason those particular fixtures were singled out? I do find it quite peculiar that a game that ended 6-2 didn't pay out here as that just hints chaos to me, but we only had the one card in this game, which surprises me. @Storts hasn't predicted for a while but retains a top half spot. @Pyfish is let down by Anthony Gordon failing to get a card at the San Siro, although Luton did score a goal for a selection winner, albeit in quite dubious circumstances. @Lucas can consider himself unlucky to lose this week. Tonali picking up an impressive 4 fouls on his return home, Guimaraes 1 but Theo Hernandez failing to commit any - probably helped by how dominant Milan were during most of the game. @RandoEFC's peculiar asian handicap bet has resulted in the first breakeven of the season as both teams ended up with single goal victories - with Real Madrid's coming in injury time and Bayern - Man Utd's back and forth resulting in a 4-3, so it can't be classed as a winner, but a good example of the value of asian handicaps I suppose and how it's a good way to hedge a bet - I say as somebody who was done by Barcelona at the weekend failing to win their game by over a goal. @...Dan's trip to France doesn't pay off as Pau ended up losing 0-3 to Annecy, although St Etienne did win their game so he gets that selection right at least. And then we move to me. Eight bets. Eight losses. This one is probably the worst yet. Absolute abject toss in every way imaginable. Two comfortable favourites both fail to land either leg of the bet, both suffering shock defeats. Aston Villa's performance was abysmal, I didn't think they would fall into the same pitfall that we did two years ago yet here we are. Brighton really surprised me though, I thought they would take AEK to pieces and they've not only failed to hit 3 goals, but they've lost the game and are in a pretty precarious position in the group now. I don't think many would believe me if I told them I won around £400 this weekend on separate accumulators, but I'm definitely picking the wrong stuff to throw onto here. I however retain faith that this is going to turn around, but simply funny to lose eight straight. It's really, really bad. Appalling. Overall, it's actually the second best week yet though. WEEK 8 STATS Winning bets: 2/8 (25%) Winning selections: 7/13* (53.8%) Weekly forum position: +£14.76 *Includes Asian Handicap 'push' x2 - not included as winner or loser OVERALL STATS Winning bets: 12/56 (21.43%) Winning selections: 44/107 (41.1%) Total forum position: -£195.82

Talking of butterflies, took this the other day...

Small aperture & fast shutter speed + continuous shooting mode. Depending on the lighting, I would say something like f8, with the shutter speed of at least 1/500s.

Once I saw 2 homeless people fucking outside a Chinese restaurant.

Maddison Got a lot of time for that reply.

I can’t remember if RATM was in our nu metal conversation but I picked Evil Empire yesterday on vinyl. Excellent album @Dr. Gonzo

Only 2 perfect scores predicted, a high score of 7 points, a terrible average score, and 1 player even scoring 0 points. That's been an awful matchday for us. Matchday 7 1) Stan 7 points 2) Coma 5 points 2) Viva la FCB 5 points 4) nawoo 4 points 4) Rucksackfranzose 4 points 6) Bluewolf 3 points 6) Michael 3 points 8- Tommy 2 points 9) CaaC(John) 0 points Top 3 positions are only separated by 1 point. Table after 7 matchdays 1) Rucksackfranzose 43 points 1) @Tommy 43 points 3) @Michael 42 points 4) @Stan 37 points 4) @Viva la FCB 37 points 6) @nawoo 36 points 7) @Coma 34 points 8- @Bluewolf 32 points 8- @CaaC (John) 32 points 10) @londonerlilie 17 points

Yeah, it's actually easier than it looks mate. I obviously didn't make the drum/reel itself as they come with cable on them originally(i wouldn't have minded that cable left on it to be honest ). But everything else was all done by hand.

What to say about Rome. Beautiful city, everywhere we walked and everywhere we went had something to marvel at. We did a hop on hop off bus for this one and we got our money's worth. Went everywhere, did a night tour as well which was really cool to see all the fountains and the everything lit up. The highlight was still easily the Colosseum. We did a 3 hour guided walking tour of the streets and some background and the Forum and then the Colosseum itself and it was well worth it. Being down on the stage in the middle was just amazing, it gave real perspective on just how massive a scale the entire thing was. In 4 full days we did and saw basically all the normal tourist sites to hit; the Pantheon was really cool, Trevi fountain, Spanish Steps etc. The Vatican museum was insane. It was definitely overwhelming much like the Uffizi gallery in Florence; theres just too much there and it took several hours to go through that its just hard to comprehend and see everything. The Sistine Chapel was the definite standout there naturally and something Ill always remember though. Other then that as I mentioned above we made it to a football match as well at the Stadio Olimpico for Lazio vs Genoa on the first night and that was awesome. We kind of took it a little easier and took our time in Rome as we started to burn out a bit and get tired. Too many things and too much to do everyday, the heat didnt help as well but we where running on fumes by the time we hit Rome. The nice part was it did cool down after the first day, had a couple days of rain on and off and mid 20's temps. So a recap here basically of all the hubs we stayed at and our day trips here over 22 nights total. We flew into Rome to start and Out from Rome at the end as well. We trained between every city except Sicily where we flew, all the day trips outside of the couple tour trips we booked in Florence where also train. 2 nights in Assisi - basically 1 full day, we landed in Rome at like 3pm and had a train out at 6pm to go to Assisi. 3 nights in Salerno (Amalfi Coast area) - day trips down the coast, stopped in Amalfi, Positano, Minori, Maori. 1 Day trip to Capri. 1 Day trip to the mountain top town Ravello. 1 night in Pompei 1 night in Naples 3 nights in Catania - day trips to Mount Etna (small tour bus and day up at the Volcano area, Taormina and Syracusa 3 nights in Milan - day trip to Lake Como 1 night in Venice - partial day trip by ferry for 4 or 5 hours to Burano 4 nights in Florence - bus tour day trips, 1 to San Gimignano, Sienna, Pisa and some of the Chianti wine country. Other day trip to Cinque Terre. 4 nights in Rome - no more day trips We absolutely loved our time in Italy and will definitely go back one day as theres alot more to see and a few things to revist even probably. Our time in each place for the most part actually I think felt pretty good. It was alot of moving around but that was what we wanted to do, we backpacked and planned accordingly. The first time we felt like we didnt see everything was Syracusa, two days would have been perfect probably. The next was Venice. Venice was beautiful, we definitely felt like we needed another day or two in Venice though but it was also really busy and quite expensive so it was kind of a compromise up front but in hindsight we should have just bit the bullet and trimmed a bit more to have more time there. Sicily was the other, 3 days was never going to be enough and we did know that up front but it was definitely worth it. The standouts for me where definitely the Amalfi Coast area, Capri was amazing as well. The biggest surprise area for me was Sicily though. Taormina was one of my top couple places. I wish we had the time to get to Palermo and the Valley of the Temples on the other side of the Island and thats at the top of the list when we get back. Overall not alot of complaints and not a whole lot I would change If I could. That being said the one is I wouldn't go back in Summer, I know the heatwave was not normal and even alot of the Italians where complaining about how bad it was and its not normal for their summers but man was it tough at times. It is what it is though its the window we had to go on a trip like this so Ill take it.