At the start of the year I made some predictions of where I thought teams would end up at the end of Round 26. Well its Round 16 and…

	My predictions for the 2012 Ladder	Actual 2012 Ladder
1	Storm	Storm
2	Tigers	Bulldogs
3	Sea Eagles	Broncos
4	Knights	Sharks
5	Bulldogs	Cowboys
6	Cowboys	Sea Eagles
7	Dragons	Rabbitohs
8	Broncos	Tigers
9	Rabbitohs	Warriors
10	Warriors	Dragons
11	Panthers	Titans
12	Roosters	Knights
13	Sharks	Raiders
14	Eels	Roosters
15	Titans	Panthers
16	Raiders	Eels

Yep, so far 1 from 16 which is terrible! Still 10 rounds of footy left before it matters just how terrible I go in this years ‘footy footy footy’ table tipping comp. Anyway…its time for an article I’ve named ‘The June Report”.  If you didnt catch last years article it looked something like this – but to sum it up I use movie quotes to describe how good/bad the teams are doing in 2012. This year I thought I would lighten the mood and do something funny. Before we begin please watch this…”THAT’S AWESOME”. Thats right…its time to kick it Old School. So Part 1 will cover all of the bottom 8 teams and Part 2 will finish up with the top of the table. Lets get into it. Starting with…

Mitch Martin: “True love is hard to find, sometimes you think you have true love and then you catch the early flight home from San Diego and a couple of nude people jump out of your bathroom blindfolded like a goddamn magic show ready to double team your girlfriend…”

Yes, it was love at first sight when the management team were watching the tail end of the 2011 season and seeing all the good things that Chris Sandow was doing for South Sydney. They imagined the love Sandow and Hanyne could make on the football field. The intense romance that their big forwards would find with Crissy stirring the ship or the relationship he could have with those speedy wingers name Willie and Esi.

Yet it seems it wasn’t meant to be. Sandow is a shell of the player he was this time last year. His defence got WORSE (if thats possible), he doesnt control the game at all, he never gets the ball to Hayne early and his forwards are lucky to be given a reasonable pass. What seemed like love was really just lust.

Frank: A little housewarming gift. 
Mitch: I actually gave this to you for your wedding. 
Frank: This model? 
Mitch: That exact one

Am I only person that remembers how Gus Gould “helped” South Sydney when they where re-instated in 2002? I must be because every single Panthers fan was so pumped about him joining the club. Never mention they fact that after basically putting Souths into more debt he just took off – thanks Phil.Now he is doing the same thing at Penrith and his excuse is that they ‘are trying to fight a code war in Western Sydney’ – comon!!

Penrith have had glimpses of being a rugby league team this year but they can’t seem to string together 80 mins of footy. It probably doesn’t help that this year they have lost one of their best players in Michael Gordon (signed with the Sharks), told there BEST player he wasn’t allowed to be Captain anymore (Luke Lewis) and pushed their best attacking weapon into NSW Cup (Michael Jennings).

Yet does any of that have to do with the war between AFL and NRL? NO WAY – It’s just bad management!

Frank: “Honey, you think KFC is still open?”

Sorry…Roosters…Chicken…it was the best I could do and I had to have this quote in. I’ll be very careful here because there is a very vocal friend of mine who is on the Roosters Protection Warpath this year. This basically involves rubbing a Roosters victory/Souths loss in Rabbitohs fans faces. So here goes…

The Roosters are exactly the side I thought they would be this year. They really needed a big signing this year and it never came. They lost Perrett *cough who cares* but there still a piece of the puzzle missing. Sometimes I watch them play and think they could be a semi finals team. Then the 2nd half will start and they will leak 20 points like its nothing. This shows when you consider they are 3rd in Points Against. They need to tighten up defensively and move Braith out of the number 6 jersey…gosh when will Smith realise he is a backrower…anywhooo. I stand by my prediction of 12th for the Roosters in 2012…so JB.

Beanie: Whose life is ruined? 
Mitch: Let’s see. Blue’s dead. Frank’s divorced. I’ve lost my house. Nicole thinks I’m a total jackass. And we got nine kids who are gonna get expelled from school and you’re not even gonna help them out. 

At the start of the year I stated that Canberra are not a top 8 side. You can’t win a competition when your two best players (Josh Dugan and Terry Campese) are always injured. It’s a model for disaster and yet Canberra have learned nothing after two years of the same stuff happening. I continue to dry retch when people talk about the Raiders playing semi finals football when there coach and CEO (who are brothers by the way) continue to have a different focus. They are just a mess of a football team.

Speaking of a mess of a football team…

Jerry: “What sort of actual association will you have with the university? “
Beanie: “Well, legally speaking, there will be a loose affiliation. But, we will give nothing back to the academic community. As well as provide no public service of any kind. This much I promise you.”

Want to talk about terrible buys this season? Nathan Tinkler got the worst buy for sure. Newcastle are currently travelling worse than they where this time last year (Rick Fox giggles). Bennett seems disinterested (more so for him anyway), Darius just isn’t there, Gidley is injured (no surprise), Uate can’t catch the ball, Tahu is ‘Tahu” and Newcastle dont even look like a top 8 side.

Run while you still can Nathan…they will stone you in Newcastle if you don’t bring them some glory.

Beanie: ”Frank here was staring at a white picket fence. Now he’s single, he’s broke, and has second-degree burns all over his body. And I see a spark in his eye that I haven’t seen in fifteen years.” 

I was pretty mean to the Titans at the start of the year. I laughed at the chance of them being in the 8 at seasons end. They needed to buy a 5/8 after Mat Rogers retirement (wait is he still retired or just permanently injured?) and instead they purchased two centres and lock/second rower. Add this to their financial troubles and you have land slide rugby league club.

That being said I think the Titans are actually turning it around. Maybe not to make semi finals football but enough to scare a few teams into thinking they are. I really like Aiden Sezer who is potentially the future of the club and Scott Prince hasn’t being doing stupid brain snap stuff as regularly as he did at the start of the season. I think things are looking sunnier up in the Gold Coast.

Marissa: That’s really, loud. 
Frank: Yeah, thanks. Took the restrictor plate off to give the Red Dragon a little more juice. But it’s not exactly street legal, so keep it on the down low. 
[waving to a neighbor] 
Frank: Hey Mike!

Jules (the trivia host at the Petersham Inn) is a huge Dragons fan. He asked me a good question the other day saying:

“If the powers that be said that your team were given a premiership at the cost of sucking for 2 years, would you take it?”

I said hands down I would ride that bad boy all the way to Chalmers Street!!

Its funny because the Dragons have been a juggernaut in the last 3 years and yet coming into this season they where glossed over to make the top 8. Sure it doesnt help that they lost a few players and a superstar coach but did that mean they werent even going to contend when the core of their squad was still present? I think its very foolish to right off the Dragons just yet.

To put it into perspective…this week the Dragons play Canberra (should be an easy win), then they have the BYE, then they play Cronulla (a team just begging to fall from grace) and then South Sydney (whom they only lost to in Golden Point last time). They win all those matches and the Dragons are a top 8 team. Don’t give up hope just yet Dragons fans.

Frank: I had an awesome time! 
Beanie: I know that you had an awesome time. I think the entire town knows you had an awesome time. 

The Warriors were living off that ‘awesome’ time last season when they sneaked into the Grand Finals. Everybody had them either winning the competition or making a strong case to do so in 2012…well havent things changed.

Watching the Warriors play can be like playing spin the bottle…only one of the girls is your cousin and the other is Erin McNaught. You could end up playing the best game EVER or you could end up in a really really bad situation.  That is because the Warriors are the ultimate rocks and diamonds team. They could show up and play fantastic second phase football, hell they nearly beat Melbourne playing that way. Other times they will show up and play park footy at best.

One thing I wont do here is speculate where they will end up because you just never know. They are a streaky team and one 3 game winning streak will see them in the finals…so I just hope for the Warriors fans sake that we all end up in a serious make out session with Miss McNaught.

Thats it for the bottom 8 teams. Stayed tuned for Part 2 coming out very soon.