As World Cup Mania descends in the UK, and the rest of the footballing/soccering world, it seemed like a great time to start one of our own competitions. I think it was Sir Jules’ idea first so I’ve called it Sir Jules’ World Cup Comp. I’m going to set up a page that will sort of monitor how the entrants are going (there are 18 of us) though I’ve yet to work out how to do this so the page is blank for now. There are no skills involved for this Cup as its more like a complex sweepstake (thank goodness because as readers know I have very limited knowledge of the sport though it is growing.) We each get four teams (one from each level of rankings) instead of just one team so all of us will have at least a sporting chance.

I think this is how the prizes will work out:

• Team that wins the World Cup (and as there are 18 of us there will be two/three people with the same World Cup winning team so it will go by countback on how well the 2nd ranked team went and then the 3rd and then the 4th if it needs to go back that far. Prize will be split if it is still a tie.)
• Best net goal position for all four teams.
• Team who has the highest individual goal scorer (and again it will go back to who has the team with the second highest individual goal scorer and so forth until we have a result.)
• Booby prize for worst net goal position for all four teams.

So, tonight we had the “draw” for the teams. Its all an excuse for a bit of a drink and laugh really. Its kind of ironic how the results fell out because apparently I ended up with nearly the perfect set of teams having drawn Brazil as my 1st ranked team, the Czech Rep as my 2nd, Serbia and Montenegro as my 3rd and the Ukraine as my 4th. We shall see I guess. This is the World Cup after all and anything could happen.

The night turned out to be quite a bit of fun. We were at The (Elusive) Camel and although the reviews for this place weren’t the best it ended up being okay – good position near the bar and we had seats all night. There is nothing I dislike more than having to stand up the whole night! Not the greatest thing for backs. Speaking of backs, at about 10pm these two girls walked into the bar and started walking around offering the customers something – turns out they were offering on the spot massages. Hmm … very wierd. At first everyone at our table laughed at the suggestion but apparently it caught Jonathan’s interest because he couldn’t help but look at the massage being given to a neighbouring customer. See pic to the right above. Eventually he succumbed and got one for himself! Its one of the wierdest massages I’ve ever seen with the masseuse using her face and forehead and just some generally strange things. Actually thinking back its a great time to hit people – when they’ve had a lot of drink and when they’ll agree to practically anything!