Welp, it's our regular annual visit to see all the things that we now know that we do not know.
Premiership Winner:
Some very iffy predicting skills here. Lots of votes for 4th-placed semi-final losers Saracens (often with complaining that they were the "obvious" choice because they were so much better than the rest), a fair few for 8th-placed Leicester (what idiot would say that?!), one optimistic Quins nomination, but we did get one person head and shoulders above the rest, and that was Switchskier who picked Saints out of nowhere.
Table order:
Everyone had faith in Leicester and everyone was disappointed, so picking Leicester too high was almost a free space in this one for people. However, a special mention goes to Epaminondas Pules, who managed to be the only person to put Northampton top only to ruin it by picking both Leicester and **Gloucester** to make the top 4!
Gloskarlos is the winner here - they may have screwed up the winner by picking Saracens (and saying "It is boring, yes very tedious. but it's the only prediction I have a hope of getting correct"!), but they got the table order closest, by picking the actual top 4 in their top 5. Gloucester was too high for them in 6th, but I'll allow a little bit of club bias.
European predictions - how will the English teams do?
Lots of "Saracens to the semi-finals/finals" predictions - we really did think they were gonna do well this season, huh? Overall we were more pessimistic - only Tigersman and FKAS picked three English teams in the quarters and no-one picked us having two teams in the semis.
Top try scorer:
Dire effort from us all. Which, Tigersman, and EP got closest with OHC scoring 8 tries, but I don't think deserve any praise considering he was 5th and scored just over half as many tries as the actual top scorer - Ollie Sleightholme, who no-one mentioned anywhere in this thread for any category!
Top points scorer:
I GOT ONE RIGHT!!!! Fin Smith top scorer (only beating out the other Finn by 2 points in the end!). The fact that I shared this prediction with 5 other people in no way invalidates that I am a predictions god and you should all worship me.
How many teams will fold by the end of the season:
Thankfully, the majority pick of "Zero" came true, although a few mentions of Newcastle flirting with it I think have merit.
Surprise of the season:
Some good answers here. Switch is cheating by doubling up on Northampton to win, Scrumhead may have been wrong with "Barbeary re-emerges at Hooker" but the board debate about it re-emerged, so that's close. EP picked "Saints sort their defence", but I think the award for this one has to go to Stom and Which, who picked Bath to "get their act together and are actually really good suddenly."
Special mentions to Tigersman and myself who naively had faith that the Prem/Prem2 would actually be sorted like the marketing boys said it would. We should really have learned by now.
Biggest disappointment:
Disproven pessimism for FKAS thinking Farrell wouldn't retire from England duty, EP thinking "Stinky Bumflaps changes nothing post world cup!", and SouthFalcon thinking that the Premiership final marketing would be screwed up and there'd be another drop in attendance. Thankfully none of those came to pass.
Joint award for pessimism to the rhyming duo of Switch: "Gloucester start the season on fire but their form collapses around Christmas" (although "on fire" might be a stretch), and Which: "Newcastle's performance - rightly cutting their cloth, and just not competitive."
Player having a breakthrough season:
No-one even thought about Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, who I'd say was the correct answer here in coming from absolutely nowhere to 2nd top try-scorer and nailing down an England shirt, but that's fair enough considering we'd probably just dismissed him as some Welsh bloke.
Instead, the top prize goes to a joint effort from me (!) for Cunningham-South and Scrumhead and Stom for Fin Baxter, both of whom will be touring with England in the summer.
Best signing:
A lot of picks for Pearson here, but he was nowhere near as impactful for Saints as people had hoped. Overall, I have to say I think Switchskier was right in Finn Russell justifying the price tag - came with a lot of hype, but in terms of individual impact on his club, you'd have to say he lived up to it.
Best unheralded signing:
I'm giving myself marks for picking Curtis Langdon here, but I should probably immediately take them away for picking Thomas du Toit as the [Redacted]
.
Scrumhead's Juan Martin Gonzalez call was good in terms of impact, but I'm not sure about an experienced international as unheralded?
SouthFalcon picking BJvR is probably the best call here. I think anyone who'd played TRM's fantasy game heralded him, but outside of us nerds, he certainly went under the radar.
The [Redacted] Award for lowest performance to hype ratio from a new signing:
Lots of people went for Russell here, but Which went hard in being wrong by picking both Russell and CCS. I picked TdT here, mostly because I was tickled at him being described as "RWC Winner Thomas du Toit" in press-releases on his signing (given he played a game off the bench against Namibia in 2019, IIRC), and was proven very wrong by him having a storming season.
I don't know there's a clear winner here. Launchbury, Vakatawa, and LCD seem like candidates, but they did play 10+ games for their new teams and did solidly okay. Gloskarlos picked Ravouvou and was right that he barely featured, but I don't remember hype for him.
The Jerome Schuster Award for most valueless signing:
SouthFalcon's petty selection of Will Haydon-Wood called to me and I'm going to have to give it to them. Despite competing with Harvey Skinner, whom I think the board considers the worst starting 10 in the league, he achieved no Premiership starts, fifteen times in the 22 shirt, of which five of them he took it back off again with no need for it to go through the wash, and another five were 12 minutes or less.
Overall, it's Switch who walks away with the title - picking Northampton to win, getting generally solid on the table order, and being the only person to have faith in Finn Russell. I would say "Good game" to the rest of you but, let's be honest - it'd be a lie cause we're (as always) a complete shambles at predicting things and should really learn never to do it ever again.
So, see you all back in again for next season's thread, yeah?
Puja
