Every week in each football season you will see people in the Club staring fixedly at a form, normally just as the weekend approaches. What are they all doing? The Tipsters. And it will keep them occupied for roughly 42 weeks, as will discussing the results as they come through over the weekend and then in the week after comes the post mortem, in which we all agree that Vinny is too lucky for his own good, Gordon spends too much time studying the form, and how Neil seems to know something despite being a Forest fan. It keeps us occupied for months.
Neil Janes’s Tipster competition is not just a great way of getting us talking to each other but it also raises substantial amounts of money for charity. Over the years Neil’s raised thousands for charity, most of which has gone to support local junior football – it was started in the mid/late-1990s to buy kit when Neil and the FWB found themselves running a Hassocks Juniors football team that urgently needed kit, not to mention footballs, training bibs and everything else. So, not only are you showing off your football knowledge when you do the Tipsters you are also supporting the development of local sport. In fact, Hassocks Juniors still gets a substantial cheque from the Tipsters every year, so if you have a child on Hassocks Juniors’ books, or you have friends who have children with the Robins, you should be doing the Tipsters.
And its so easy to do. All you have to do is predict the scores from ten games, normally Premiership or Championship games but occasionally internationals and League 1/2 games, guess the total number of goals scored in those games, answer some simple questions and then pick four individual goalscorers from those games. I have attached the first week’s form, which concerns the weekend of August 12th, so that you can study it at leisure.
You don’t have to do the Tipsters every week, although its more fun if you do, because there are weekly prizes handed out for the first, second and third placed predictors. Gordon always has the forms behind the bar and you can leave your completed form behind the bar, normally before the fist Saturday lunchtime.
So why not have a go and see how you like it? You have a chance of winning money, you’re helping raise money for local sports as well as other charities and you’ll be in with a shout at the end of the season for one of the big annual prizes, which we’ll hopefully be handing out on the same evening as England play in the World Cup next summer.
Finally, if you are a regular Tipster and you’re about to go off on holiday, Gordon has the first five weeks forms behind the bar, so you can do them before you go.