Continuing our look ahead to the new year of sport, we offer up our bold 2019 Sporting Predictions.
Following up to the Fifty 2019 Sporting Calendar Events you should watch, are the things that will happen according to us during these events and more.
As usual most will involve our favourite sporting teams and people, or air the first beefs with our usual sporting foes for 2019.
We’ll take it even further with our upcoming Tipstradamus 500 2019 Sports Tipping competition due this week.
But for now, here are our more general 2019 Sporting Predictions.
Bold 2019 Sporting Predictions
BARROW RAIDERS FANS WILL BECOME BIG PNG FANS
May as well start off with an obscure one.
2019 has seen a massive influx of former PNG Hunters premiership winners heading for UK Championship rugby league clubs, and are first bold prediction is that the Barrow Raiders fans will become huge PNG fans before the season is halfway over.
Almost as big a fan as we are.
Especially because they have nabbed our favourite rugby league player in the world – Willie Minoga. His hard charging, turbo boosted runs will no doubt win over the Raiders fans, as they did in Australia.
Not only is the Mack Truck of Wapenamanda playing for Barrow this season, but they also hired two of his premiership winning Hunters comrades.
Hooker Wartovo Puara is a good number nine, but in Stargroth Amean they have a players who was in career best form before his sudden retirement for studies. He getting right up to the standard of Kumuls captain David Mead.
Whether they play every week remains to be seen, but the first of our bold 2019 sporting predictions will be that they entertain when they do get the chance.
PEOPLE WILL GET BORED OF WAYNE BENNETT
One of the big off-season news stories for the NRL was the coaching merry-go-round, and that stopped with Anthony Seibold and Wayne Bennett swapping teams for 2019, As tedious and boring as it was.
The end result was both coaches eventually swapping, which seemed inevitable throughout the whole back and forth.
But which one will be more successful? We’re not sure, but our bold 2019 sporting prediction is that Wayne Bennett will become even more grumpy in 2019, leading to Souths having a worse year than 2018, and then a cycle of Wayne crankiness where there’ll be bust ups with the press will revolve until eventually Souths fans grow weary too. Quickly.
NRL WILL ATTEMPT TO RUIN RUGBY LEAGUE WITH AN INFRINGEMENT CRACK DOWN
Every year the NRL come out with a crackdown on some small, pathetic rule at the start of the season. 2019 will be no different.
As easy as that is to predict, so will be the outrage at the nit-picking, and of course it will die down within weeks when the NRL realise fans don’t want 30 penalties a game. If they did, they’d watch rugby.
WOMEN’S NRL WILL BE THE BETTER GAME TO WATCH.
Referring to the above, while the men’s version tries its hardest to hurt its own game, the NRLW is a much more simplified game, but no less physical or interesting.
Free from most of the wrestle, grapple, time wasting, and moaning, the NRLW is a refreshing rugby league view.
NZ WARRIORS WILL HAVE FIVE JERSEYS FOR THE SEASON.
The NRL loves jerseys, the main economic unit for the organisation, and the NZ Warriors are the front-runners for quantity over quality. Just ahead of the Wests Tigers (who do have an excuse as a merged club).
The only thing the Warriors are a front runner for every year.
NO ONE WILL LIKE ORIGIN TIME ON CHANNEL NEIN
State of Origin is rugby league’s premium event, what a shame they ruin it with C Grade commentary at best.
The Fox League snobs have to lower themselves four times a year, and there will certainly be plenty of justified moaning about their dross. Especially from this Fox League snob.
Some things are worth paying for.
Enough rugby league already….
LEWIS HAMILTON WILL OFFEND AT LEAST THREE TIMES ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Lewis Hamilton may well be the best F1 driver in the world, and he has quite the following on social media.
Neither of those stop him from offending people on social media every now and again, so we boldly predict another three events this year where he will offend others with a careless tweet or update.
Perhaps it’s out of boredom at the front of the F1 grid that makes him to do it.
FERNANDO ALONSO WILL IN THE INDY 500
Doesn’t Fernando Alonso deserve just a little on track success?
Sure moving to McLaren wasn’t the best idea in hindsight, but he did entertain us for that time, and surely he deserves an Indy 500 win to cap a career that could have been so much more.
THE AUSTRALIAN CRICKET TEAM WILL PROBABLY NOT ENJOY THEIR FEW MONTHS IN ENGLAND
Australian cricket stocks are pretty low at the moment, and who knows if Marsh brothers exodus, and Sandpaper tag team arrivals will save our hides in the northern hemisphere summer.
There’s a ODI World Cup and Ashes Series to be won in England.
Sadly, our recent record with even those good players is quite ordinary.
In the last ten years Australia have won just 12 games out of 39 in all formats in England. Certainly not good enough to retain the World Cup, or the Ashes.
So we say England retain the Ashes comfortably, and Australia won’t progress to the big stages in the massively stretched out World Cup.
SOCCEROOS WILL CHALLENGE THE WALLABIES FOR AUSTRALIA’S MOST POINTLESS SPORTING TEAM.
The Socceroos will continue drifting backwards into obscurity. An underwhelming World Cup looks like it is going to be followed by a slightly more underwhelming Asian Cup.
We occasionally thrash a minnow, then lose to one, and then whenever we play someone half decent look very ordinary. We never seem to be able to score goals against anyone good.
Although, given our resources and the competition around the world in football, you can excuse the Socceroos for their lack of wins. Unlike the Wallabies.
ONE POLITICAL PARTY WILL TRY AND USE THE EVILS OF SPORTS GAMBLING AS AN ELECTION BATTLEGROUND.
After destroying smoking in sport, we boldly predict that Sports Gambling will be a battlefield for the folk in Canberra to argue about during this year’s election.
You can barely watch a sport on TV these days without seeing some kind of odds being shoved in your face. And someone will want someone to think of the children.
We like a punt, and do think some of the advertising is over the top, but we are predicting mountains out of molehills coming soon.
