Round 6 was a round full of surprises, with Andy finally losing his unbeaten streak to Nat, and even more surpring - Alan finally getting his first win of the season. And in what seemed like mere minutes since the conclusion of the previous round, thanks to ANZAC Day, we’re already back and ready to go again.

Before we go onto the preview though, we thought we’d take a look at the head to head ladder (above) and stack it up against the Total Points ladder, to see (definitely for no self-serving purpose) who was the unluckiest and luckiest teams currently in the IJL. Thinking you’re hard done by this season? Well, the actual proof might be below, when we present the ‘Ladder of Unluckiness’.

We’ve ranked the ladder based on differential between the actual head to head ladder position and the total points position. So +4 means a player is 4 positions higher on the ladder than he is ranked for total points. When coaches have the same differential, we’ve ranked them by percentage (the lower the percentage, the higher up the ladder, so reverse of Head-To-Head). As you can see, Will, Lachlan and Mitch have absolutely no reason to complain about anything and are absolutely taking the league for fools at the current point in time. Brenton meanwhile has also been counting his lucky stars. In the reverse of this, the constant whinging of both Gabe and Shay is proving to be justified, with both of them a shocking SIX places lower on the ladder than they should be. Chris, Alan and Nat would all be feeling fairly maligned as well.

So with that in mind, it’s on to this week’s games.

However, I should warn you that I already wrote all the match headings out and then had to go make dinner, so with the round starting in exactly 1 minute, despite committing to writing a preview for every match, they are now going to be questionable quality at best.

Game 1: (14th) Do the Tsa Tsa (Kristin) Vs (5th) OscarPu$$y (Kris) H2H History: Kris 1, Kristin 0

We’ve had the battle of the Chris/Kris’ for a few years now, and now it seems we have the battle of the Kris(tin)s. That’s honestly the most interesting thing about this match. Kristin got beaten badly last week due to a series of outs, which wasn’t at all manipulated by Mark despite them all occurring on the exact week he faced her. With Mark now out of the picture, we can assume that Kristin will have all those players back and should put in a better showing. Will it be enough to beat a 2 time champion in Kris though? Also, can someone explain to me how Mason Wood is somehow one of the top 20 players in the league? What happened there? SURELY Kris didn’t draft him??

Game 2: (6th) Kick it to sCooper (Tom) Vs (7th) Tsatasfaction (Brenton) H2H History: Brenton 7, Tom 4

Brenton and Tom have both won the favour of the SC Gods somehow this year - Tom presumably using his fabled voodoo. The good news for Tom is that his eternal love Fyfe is going to be moved into the middle according to Freo to… wait, what’s that? He’s not even back yet? Well why did I read that he was being moved into the middle? In future weeks? Well what’s the point of… get your hands off me! Where are you THROWING M-

Game 3: (18th) MarkovTheBeast (Peter) Vs (15th) Get to the Hopper (Rob) H2H History: N/A.

Peter has improved markedly over the last couple of rounds. It seems like after the first 2 or 3 weeks, he finally learnt how to SuperCoach, just in time to beat Alan. A fun time was had by all. Rob, meanwhile, beat Shay last week which few probably saw coming (Shay definitely saw it coming, refer to the Ladder of Unluckiness above). Peter probably could have circled this game as one he’d potentially have a chance in - but a quick look at both teams shows Rob has a full side (thanks in part to his willingness to treat EVERY round like a bye round and trade out anyone not playing) and Peter is once again missing like 5 players. So unless Peter realises/does something about this, it’s going to back to the old days for MarvovTheBeast.

Game 4: (8th) Alwyn&TheChipMunks (Lachlan) Vs (3rd) Hollands-aiseSauce (Andrew) H2H History: Lachlan 1, Andy 0.

Andy was complaining last week that he was never getting a preview despite being undefeated. A fair complaint. We claimed it was because he was winning too easily and it therefore wasn’t interesting. So he went and made things interesting by losing to Nat. You have to admire that level of commitment to getting a preview. And now that he has one, you have to assume he’ll go back to winning. He is afterall still the overall highest scorer, even if he did pull out a miserable score last week (one of the lowest, in fact). Meanwhile, Lachlan, who I feel like has been crying about his team and how cursed he is for most of the season, is the equal luckiest coach in the league. So… either that continues and he undeservedly beats Andy, or Andy finally starts the process of putting Lachlan back down where he belongs. Time will tell.

Game 5: (13th) Allan is the key (Mitchell) Vs (9th) Epsteene Island (Chris) H2H History: Mitch 3, Chris 1.

I honestly don’t know how to read this game. Mitchell is the number one luckiest coach in the league. By all accounts he should be second last, and yet he remains a chance for the 8 sitting in 13th. Counter to that, Chris should be fighting for a spot in the top 4, but instead remains outside the 8. This is very much a case of Blessed vs Cursed - and if Mitch somehow wins it, the disparity will be even worse.

Game 6: (10th) Lobbjockeys (Will) Vs (4th) JingleAllTheMcStay (Gav) H2H History: Gav 4, Will 3.

The whole league had gotten to a point of really enjoying seeing Alan lose week after week. The loss to Peter had everyone wondering if Alan might just go through the whole season without a single win. But, you know what they say, where there’s Will there’s a way to lose. And lose he did, spectacularly. Will never even looked like he was in it. Too busy getting drunk on bathwater or eating weddings or something. I don’t know, nothing Will does is very comprehensible. And so now he plays Gavin, and presumably Gavin just wins and we move on with our lives.

Game 7: (12th) Baby Brain (Nat) Vs (16th) Wardlaw & Order (Alan) H2H History: Nat 8, Alan 8.