FIFA World cup - go aussies

Driving into work today I was listening to SEN, the sports radio station here, and they were talking about the World Cup with that idiot Patrick Smith talking with the great KB about it.

KB, like me, was enthused by the draw and said we should go in with some confidence, and Patrick Smith was saying that it was so difficult that we're unlikely to get passed the group stages - in fact bookies are giving us 150 to 1 odds of getting through, so I'm off to put some money down on that bet, because for $100 it will be the easiest $15,000 I'll ever win!

With my limited knowledge on the history of World Soccer, let's have a look at this.

Australia is currently ranked 21st in the world - in September we were ranked as high as 14th.

Serbia is currently ranked 20th and again in September were ranked 13th.

Germany ranked 6th, in September ranks 4th, and earlier in the year for over 12 months had bee ranked 2nd.

Ghana is ranked 37th, and in September were 32nd.

Yes, they're all good teams, Germany will be tough but not impossible - we played them once in a World Cup match were they beat us 3-0, but that must have been the first time we got to the world cup in the 70's and got smashed by everyone. Since then we've played once more, and lost 3-4, a very honourable score line for a country who has soccer ranked as their 4th or 5th major national team sport?

Ghana we've played a few times, and the ledger is on our side, so there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to beat these guys.

The game against Serbia I think will be the decider as to who goes through or not - we seem to be one rank behind them for some time and my gut tells me that we're an even stevens contest against them and will come down to who takes their opportunities.

My prediction is that we will lose to Germany 2-1, beat Ghana 2-0 and beat Serbia 2-1 putting us through to the next stage against England.

We'll be England because they're chokers and then play France in the Quarter Finals - now my head says we'll lose that, but then we performed incredibly well against Italy last time around, showing that we can compete, and we duffed a few goal scoring opportunities against Brazil in for me one of the most entertaining matches of the cup, even though we got a pasting it was non stop action. So if we do beat France, although that's unlikely even for an optimist like myself, guess who'll be the lucky buggers to play Brazil - we will in a 7-2 pasting goal fest, they'll smash the pants off us as if they were made of glass, but will be fun to watch none the less.

So to those out there that feel as though we don't have a chance, chance a $100, win $15k and enjoy the games because I think it will be a cracker, and you're a cracker if you don't think we have a chance.

Go boys!

Enjoy,
C

Over the weekend, I was thinking about my belly, and how I'd like to lose it for my upcoming wedding in June, and I've always been partial to those meal replacement drinks - mainly because I like milk shakes and they're easy, no thought required.

So I stumbled upon an aussie website call www.becominghealthy.com.au and what got my interest was that they had different shakes for different requirements, and also offered free help from their dietitian Bill Cootes.

I'm glad to say I've purchased my shakes, and am now waiting to get them across which should be a couple of days away, but that's not what I wanted to blog about. What I wanted to blog about was something that Bill ran through with e today...

I was talking to Bill about my height weight, what I want to get down to what I'm doing now, etc... and I mentioned that normally I would drink 8 to 10 coffees a day, a lot I know, but I have a habit of drinking it like water, I have my mug by me and just keep drinking away, then I might have one or two when I get home.

So Bill got me to write some figures down and do some calculations.

I have 2 sugars with my coffee, so 16 teaspoons of sugar a day, and there are 6 grams of sugar in a teaspoon = 96 grams of sugar x 4 calories = 384 calories from the sugar in my coffee alone per day.

Now in 1kg of body fat there are 9000 calories. So if you decide to eat someone, don't eat the crackling I guess?

So if you take 384 calories from sugar in my coffee multiplied by 365 days a year = 140,160 calories, divide that by 9000 calories or 1kg of body fat and that's a touch over 15.5kgs, 34 pounds or 2.4 stone in the really old measure.

Now I don't drink that many coffee's on the weekend, because I don't have a pot of coffee ready to be pured like I do in the office here, but I thought it was amazing to think with all the fad diets out there, that something so small a change in my life style could potentially have such an effect on me.

Cool huh?

Enjoy,
C