Could someone please explain Quidditch to me?

I was reading the paper about a week ago and some guy was writing in to complain about a poor game of football or something somewhere which really annoyed him. He was really annoyed because one team had won, they had scored only one try but they had got a conversion, I think some other points from things that were like whatevers, field goals or special kicks or whatever the terminology in this particular game was. I'm afraid I don't know too much about the game to explain.

The thing is, the other team had got more tries and LOST. I don't think the margin was great but they lost.

And it really annoyed the man and he thought it was a stupid game and really, it took all the fun out it and just was boring and not worth watching.

This brings me to the well-known Rowling-invented, Harry Potter game of Quidditch which I'm afraid I just don't understand and maybe someone can explain it to me.

Apparently it's a riveting game and everyone loves it, everyone magical that is, so there must be something to it, or could wizards and witches just have terrible taste?

But basically it involves two teams and and they beat balls into goals and get ten points per goal, with a defence goalies on each side too, that makes sense.

The bit that doesn't make sense is The Golden Snitch, which is worth 150 points of caught, and ends the game. Apparently it is the only thing that ends the game.

Now, given that the catching of The Golden Snitch is worth 15 goals, it makes sense that you have to get 16 goals to make it worth your team not catching the Snitch. That seems to me quite a few.

Here's some questions:

a) If you were a Beater, or in fact anyone other than a Seeker (the guy/gal who goes after the Golden Snitch), wouldn't you feel a bit useless on the team?
b) If you were the team Captain, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to spend more time just working out strategy that involved sabotaging the other team's Seeker's efforts so your team's Seeker could get to the Snitch fastest, rather than bothering with trying to score goals?
c) Since the Snitch is worth 150 points AND ends the game, not only does it make sense to make the Snitch a priority, but wouldn't it also make sense to work out some kind of signal system so that if your team is trailing by more than 150 points, your Seeker doesn't actually catch the Snitch, but instead puts his/her efforts into stopping the other Seeker from catching it? And that you only actually catch it when you are winning or are less than 150 points behind?

How come there are games when someone has caught the Snitch but they've lost anyway, you'd think professionals would do better than that!

I think I am really missing something. I would be very grateful if someone could explain what all the fuss about Quidditch was. Since the Seeker was so powerful in relation to everything else, disproportionately so, I felt it actually took away from the game. It lacked real suspense and drama.

At any rate I'm sorry but I could never get that excited about Quidditch, I guess I am too nerdy to even be really into sports :)

What footy mascot would you be?

Recently Mr Coffee and I indulged in one Cronulla Sharks NRL tote bag from Coles, because they were selling them off at 20c a pop. Thing is, we didn't know it was a Cronulla bag until we bought it, we just picked it over the raiders one because we liked the Shark pick, and because the pricing scheme was mega-cool.

However the experience sparked off a conversation - how do Football teams pick their names anyhow, and how do they figure out what animal or whatever they are? Why is it Sydney Roosters and Balmain Tigers and Illawarra Dragons and Adelaide Crows. I haven't quite figured it out.

Given their reputation, I figured out Melbourne Storm fairly easily and I have to say - well-chosen, guys.

Why aren't their any Pigs or Ants or Axolotls or Cockroaches or Hamsters? or maybe there are , I don't know that much about football.

I don't know enough much about Football but I started tossing around names for teams that I thought would be appropriate. Something more interesting than the Brisbane Broncos and the South Sydney Rabbitohs.

How about a bit of alliteration - Wollongong Wombats?

Or some nice word association games:

Darwin Crocodiles?
Darwin's Theories?
Darwin's Beards?

Tasmanian Tigers
Tasmanian Devils
Tasmanian Oysters?

The Sunshine Coast Schoolies?

The Melbourne Trams?

What would you call the footy team in your area?

Climb Every (well, three, anyhow) Mountain

Last Monday I got my Learner's in Indoor Rockclimbing. Mr Coffee has been several times before me, with an all-male troupe, but on Monday we did it with a mixed gathering.

The reason for the all male outings, explained Mr Coffee, was to increase alpha-maleness by sport.

And oh, I found out what he meant as soon as I got there.

Them rockclimbing harnesses are somehow engineered in a very interesting triangle shape to just emphasise the pelvic region and to outline and push forth the family jewels, so to speak. If there were ever a sport where the nuts could go nuts, I'd say this would be it.

However, the 4 of us, were determined to have a good time, even if we had our bots tied up and felt slightly ridiculous at first. Two males - Mr Coffee and his mate, Nova, and to balance the female side out, the lively, spritely, Tam O'Shanter, who was as small as me but had five times the energy.

Firstly, we got a lesson in how to safely check each other, and Tam climbed the training wall so lithely I thought it'd be a breeze. Next I had a go and found it weren't so easy. Damn! Where was that bit of rock? And how come I had managed to get so heavy myself lately - I didn't think I'd be so difficult to pull up a rockface!

What was worse, however, hreoically, I made it to the top of the training wall.

"Let me down!" I called.

Peter, the instructor, had different ideas. He was giving a blonde nearby a long spiel on how to let down a person safely - and let me down a lot. "Let me down! HELP!" I screamed, as I dangled at the top of the wall! Was I going to have to stay there forever, with a harness grasping at my groin?

It seemed ages later that I was brought down, among yelps.

Then came the times when I had to belay for Mr Coffee. I made several mistakes; firstly I thought I had to use all my weight and strength to keep him up on the mountain or else he'd fall off, not realising there's a security catch on the rope. So boy, did my arms get sore for no reason.

Secondly, when I let him down, I was overly cautious and slow, and didn't let a lot of slack in the rope, which (harness position again) is quite cruel on the male's crotch and tends to go for the giant wedgie.

But live and learn. I'll try not to do that too much again, unless there's a great need for revenge.

I tried several other walls. I managed two others to the top, and another about three quarters of the way up. Tam was like a monkey; I was like an elephant.

"Curse it! Why do the rocks have to be so far away! If only my arm were ... just ... a little bit longer ... a little bit longer ...!" And you get so darn tired. Right now my muscles ache. Upper arm and thighs especially. I'm sure I don't know how they did Mt Everest. Probably the handholds there were a whole lot better spaced.

World Knowledge

This man (Daniel Geale) just became IBO world middleweight champion. And he's Australian. But most people don't know about him.

He said in a recent interview:

"Am I Australia's least known world champion? Yeah probably." with a laugh.

I assure Daniel Geale that I don't know of any other Australian world champion that I know of less than I know of him. There, boy!

Mismatched Sporting Opportunities

Before I start on a Christmas dissection, I just read a bit in the paper where a journalist was defending soccer (no, he wasn't the goalkeeper).

He was trying to explain that it really was a very exciting game, even if snobs in rugby looked down at it as a sport for the numerically challenged who couldn't understand the complexities of rugby scoring.

Huh?

Since when did difficult numerics come into rugby, either? This kind of reminds me of the Sixteen going On Seventeen song from the Sound of Music, where the pompous ass seventeen year old thinks he's great guns for being seventeen and not sixteen. Whoopie-doo! Rugby includes something like having to add fours, twos and ones (as opposed to having to just add ones, as in soccer). Which may be brain-bending for some rugby players, but pretty much a laugh for most of us who passed first grade.

Even slightly challenging mathematics isn't something often associated with rugby, so why even bother boasting about the difficult maths needed for your sport? It should be kept simple (for the life of me, I don't see why the 15, 30, 40 is needed in tennis).

Just the same way as chess isn't associated with boxing. But for some reason which boggles the brain, some people with a real sense of humour have put together the sport of chess boxing , combining the two popular competition activities, so while they're sitting down waiting for sudoku wrestling and Scrabble weightlifting to make its mark, I'm going to suggest Rugby Calculus Tournaments.

What sort of mismatched Sporting & Gaming Comps would you love to see - and perhaps get involved in?