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Author Topic: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'  (Read 4161 times)

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Offline JDB

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'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« on: October 05, 2007, 12:45:48 PM »
For all the addicts out there, I am sure you can relate.

'My name is Benjie and I'm addicted to fantasy football'


When your Saturday evening includes wondering if Leighton Baines created any goals earlier in the day, then you know you're in trouble.
Benjie GoodhartOctober 5, 2007 1:08 PM
There is a reason most men don't like being asked the question "what are you thinking about?" It is because the answer is almost never the right one. Instead of "how much I love watching Dirty Dancing with you, my angel" or "when we could next go shoe shopping" it tends to be more "what your sister would look like in a bikini" or "who would win a fight between Mr T and Arnold Schwarzenegger". The problem is, we're quite sad creatures. At least, I am.

One day a couple of weeks back, the missus asked what I was thinking. Twice. This wasn't a wistful, romantic, dreamy, "let me see the inner-you" question (thank God) but rather more one based on the fact that I'd frozen, a forkful of pizza inches from my mouth, and started to stare into the middle distance, perhaps drooling absentmindedly. The problem was, I had to admit I was wondering if Leighton Baines had been named man of the match on Saturday. She was deeply impressed.

Hours later, on a train, she asked why I'd been staring at the luggage rack for several minutes. It's quite interesting to discover just how irritated a woman can become by the seemingly innocuous phrase "I was just thinking about whether Gareth Barry will create any goals this afternoon, or whether he'll be exhausted after his England games."

So here we go. In an effort to ensure that my unborn child does not grow up fatherless, I need to tackle my demons: my name is Benjie Goodhart, and I'm addicted to fantasy football.

I first discovered fantasy football when I was 22, young, naïve and foolish. I'm not proud of what it made me do: I ended up buying a newspaper whose political stance made Enoch Powell look like Clare Short, just so I could play its shiny new football game. Indeed, I actually appeared to be quite good at it. In my second year, I finished the season 81st. OK, that hardly makes me Carl Lewis, but I was happy.

For a while. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, fantasy football has taken more out of me than I have out of it. The games changed, were refined, improved. They became cheaper and easier to play, more involving, more exciting and more time-consuming. The Premier League brought out its own, official, free online version. You no longer had two transfers a season, but one or two every week. And before I knew it, I was hooked, drowning in a flood of transfers amid an ocean of statistics.

It has changed me, changed the way I watch my beloved football. I no longer live for the moments when athleticism and genius combine in a moment of sublime aesthetics: the 30-yard strike, the balletic, weaving dribble. Of far more importance is whether the ball hit the arse of one of my attackers on its way into the net. If someone were to pick up the ball in their own area, beat 11 players and slot it home for the greatest goal ever, my only concern would be that it was one of my defenders who had initially passed them the ball.

And when you get involved in a mini-league - that's where things really start to get out of hand. Winning is everything: fantasy football is more important than life and death. And it doesn't matter what principles are sacrificed along the way.

At the start of every season, I pick a team devoid of Chelsea players: as a QPR fan, it is a matter of principle. Except that, sooner or later, you notice that Frank Lampard is scoring regularly, or Shaun Wright-Phillips looks a bit tasty. And suddenly they're in, because beating your friends, grinding them into the dust, means more to you than any tribal loyalty. To my shame, I have cheered Chelsea goals. If not wanting them to win, necessarily, I have wanted them to lose 7-6, with a Lampard double hat-trick.

And I'm not even the worst offender. I spoke to a friend recently who said he'd had a bad weekend, football-wise. He's a Gooner, and they'd just beaten Spurs 3-1 away, yet he was traumatised by his fantasy team's poor performance. This is the same man who has been known, towards the end of the season, to sit at home with the team line-ups of his rivals and a pen and paper, listening to the radio and keeping a running tally of scores.

Most tragically of all, this is the man who spent a large chunk of New Year's Eve in an internet cafe in King's Cross, planning his transfers. Why? Because he and I had a £10 bet riding on that season. At the end of the season, he won. He won £10. His total internet cafe expenditure was £30 for the season. And the saddest thing of all? He considered it money well spent. Then again, I'm hardly in a position to pass judgement. If it had cost me three times that to beat him, I'd have jumped at the chance.

Benjie Goodhart is a journalist and fantasy football expert. He is currently rock bottom of the GU Sport Pick the Score league.
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Offline Cowen

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2007, 01:36:21 PM »
lol ...... i could relate to this ...  :rotfl:

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Offline Blue

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2007, 01:42:08 PM »
For the record, Leighton Baines didnt create any goals last weekend, but he was awarded one bonus point to go along wid his clean sheet...so he earnt me 7 points in total :beermug:  ;)

Offline dinho

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #3 on: October 05, 2007, 01:46:22 PM »
For the record, Leighton Baines didnt create any goals last weekend, but he was awarded one bonus point to go along wid his clean sheet...so he earnt me 7 points in total :beermug:  ;)

 :rotfl: :rotfl:

this thing does be eating up my time too...

i think i peruse every available player for possible inclusion in my elite fantasy team...
         

Offline kevinAckin

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2007, 01:53:06 PM »
my name is Kevin Ackin and I recently got addicted to fantasy football

Offline ricky

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #5 on: October 05, 2007, 01:57:41 PM »
wey allyuh men real suck if yuh spending so much time on it  :devil: :beermug:
but i admit i guilty of spending $10US  on a cruise to make transfers last year lol

Offline andre samuel

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #6 on: October 05, 2007, 02:34:18 PM »
My name is Andre Samuel, and i am at the top ot the fantasy league footbal table.

ah love it!!
Andre Samuel, who controls all the rights to the phrase "ah love it!!"

Offline dinho

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2009, 09:15:24 AM »
you too Jose??


Jenas bid is fantasy - Mourinho

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/europe/7836930.stm

Inter Milan manager Jose Mourinho has blamed his fantasy football selections for rumours he is interested in signing Jermaine Jenas from Tottenham.

"Last July the Daily Telegraph started their fantasy football league and paid me to take part," said Mourinho.

"In my squad I put Jenas and others. Six months later the market reopens and it comes out I like these players.

"I like them, otherwise I wouldn't have put them in my squad, but that's a transfer market without rules."

The former Chelsea boss has been linked with a bid for midfielder Jenas, 25, in recent days.

"It seems to me that someone wants a player from Inter and seeing that they know I like another player, they've brought out this story," he added.

Jenas did not last long in Mourinho's team, while Spurs team-mate Gareth Bale - also singled out by Mourinho as a selection - was "transferred out" in December.

   
MOURINHO'S FANTASY XI
Mourinho's fantasy football line-up, correct as of 19 January:
GK: Reina
DF: Arbeloa, Evra, Gallas, Bosingwa
MF: Denilson, Gerrard, Young, Nasri
FW: Berbatov, Defoe
Mourinho made wholesale changes to his failing fantasy squad in October.

Manchester City winger Shaun Wright-Phillips was one of five players brought in to rectify the situation, but the winger has now been axed in favour of Arsenal's Denilson.

Mourinho is currently ranked well outside the top 100,000 participants.
         

Offline JDB

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2009, 10:56:31 AM »
Yuh resuscitating dead threads. I feel yuh just want to remind Andre Samuel of this:

My name is Andre Samuel, and i am at the top ot the fantasy league footbal table.

ah love it!!

Oh how the mighty have fallen.
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Offline SHOTTA

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2009, 11:33:33 AM »
lol.....i share your setiments JDB
 :beermug:

i readin and thinkin how andre first and me and he was on the second page together but is a long time thread man
now that we have mastered the language we can wield it as we may

Offline kaliman2006

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2009, 12:43:33 PM »
At the start of every season, I pick a team devoid of Chelsea players: as a QPR fan, it is a matter of principle. Except that, sooner or later, you notice that Frank Lampard is scoring regularly, or Shaun Wright-Phillips looks a bit tasty. And suddenly they're in, because beating your friends, grinding them into the dust, means more to you than any tribal loyalty. To my shame, I have cheered Chelsea goals. If not wanting them to win, necessarily, I have wanted them to lose 7-6, with a Lampard double hat-trick.

QPR? Now that's a team I haven't heard anything about in a while. I think they were in the English First Division (Premier League equivalent back then for those who may not know) back around the 90-91 season.

Whatever happened to that team?

Offline Cowen

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Re: 'My name is ...... and I'm addicted to fantasy football'
« Reply #11 on: January 19, 2009, 04:39:45 PM »
Yuh resuscitating dead threads. I feel yuh just want to remind Andre Samuel of this:

My name is Andre Samuel, and i am at the top ot the fantasy league footbal table.

ah love it!!

Oh how the mighty have fallen.


Wen ah tell allyuh the man was just lucky last year ........ he fight me down saying i only copying his side. But Andre just farting against thunder right now ...... the 2nd and 3rd page beckons  :devil:

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