JAMIE ACHIEVES THE UNTHINKABLE!

After 64 matches and 169 goals we have been blessed with one of the greatest World Cups we can remember. The stadia, the fans, the players, the weather, the penalties, even VAR all contributed to a thoroughly entertaining festival of footy for us all. And what a Footcall we have had too as Jamie "When the Sains "Go marching in!" has done the unimaginable. He correctly predicted the outcome of every single Knockout Stages match perfectly. That is an astonishing 15 match running streak which saw our Jamie rise like a phoenix from the bottom of page one of the league where he was treading water in 46th place with 38 points. Two weeks later he finds himself 32 points better off and 45 places further up in position number one looking down on all before him. He even finished four points clear of Richard Ware who also had a phenomenal rise up the charts. Not since Alex Stoater in 2008 who guessed all the Knockout Stages matches correctly has this been done. The difference for Jamie however is that the World Cup has more than double the number of predictions required so his achievement eclipses that of Alex's by some margin. Congratulations Jamie, you are the Footcall Champion of 2018. Not only does he take the title he pockets a cool £450 (plus £55) for his Knockout Stages success. Pretty impressive seeing as this is only his second Footcall and in 2016 he finished fourth. Now up in to fifth position on the Footcall Hall of Fame table, Kelly is never going hear the end of this. Unbelievable Jeff!

The crucial eight pointer today made a big difference to those who picked France to pick up the trophy including Adam "My word how did I finish up here?" Palmer, Paul O'Donnell, Manoj "More HoF points" Gupta, Neil "leave it to the last minute" White. Also Birgit Hoffstadt did tremendously well to climb up to 15th only to miss out on the money bracket by the amount of red squares collected. Yasmin "only 100 places better than Max" Coupland, Nick D'Avanzo, Helene "I'm going to spend my prize money on a Footcall tattoo" Wilkinson and finally David "How did I get on the first page" Ginger completes the line up of Footcallers who scored four more points than France did on the field.

The full list of winners and their prize money have been published on the home page of the Footcall website and I would just like to thank Philip Vingoe who has very generously donated £65 to our supported charity Bloodwise. Well done Phil and well done to fellow Footcallers, Elizabeth and Jonathan Rowland, for their tireless work they commit towards raising money for such a worthwhile cause.

The prize winners list doesn't end there as we have 12 Division winners to award. These are given to the highest placed teams of the non-prize money winning players and you can see that list in the table below. All these lucky players receive free entry to Footcall 2020.

We should also congratulate Will Relf for his team Chicken Caesar Salah being voted the favourite team name and let us commiserate with Jamie Marshall and Ian Pope who perhaps did something almost as remarkable as Jamie Sains' achievement as they managed to beat my brother Simon to the Vuvuzela Award and finished bottom of the heap. That's a quite a feat as my brother is a professional Vuvu player and your efforts will be rewarded with enough money to come and have another go at Footcall in two years time.

That's it, I think I've said enough for one report, I'd like to give a big thanks to all that took part in, to Spencer Collins for the backstage work behind the scenes, to Matt Clark, Neil White, Iain Baker and Peter Mulvey for their massive contributions to the commentary and in particular my lovely wife, Christine, who for one month every other year becomes a Footcall widow whilst I immerse myself in this crazy world. It's been a lot of fun, every Footcall is better than the last, it's been a lot of hard work and it's been emotional but I couldn't have done it without your support and I for one cannot wait until we set sail on the good ship HMS Footcall once again.

That's all folks! See you back here, same time, same place for Footcall 2020.

David