Competitions Pieman 2026

[dogwatch]

Oh my Dog, is it less than two weeks to our first game already? Well that must mean ...


Pieman Season 15 is now open!

Welcome to Pieman 15. Yes, it's our crystal anniversary, so get out your crystal ball.
I'm sure we'll see many of the regulars but new players are always welcome.

If you're interested, read on.

No rule changes for 2026, except to reflect the fact that the AFL has finally done away with the sub. So now you can pick any of the 23 selected players each week.

For those who have never played before it's pretty simple:

• You pick 5 Western Bulldogs players each week.
• You get a certain number of points when any of them kicks a goal. The points you get are different depending on the player.

That's the gist of it.

Here’s a little more detail of how it works:

• Everything happens in this thread
• I publish goalkicking “handicaps” for each player for each round (the less likely he is to kick goals, the higher his handicap will be)
• Each time one of your players kicks a goal you accrue points equal to that player's handicap
• The highest total points each week wins the "Kelvin" for that round
• The winner of the comp overall ("The Pieman") is the one who has accumulated most points at the end of the year, covering all games the Dogs play, including finals
• You can use your picks any way you like including doubling up on one player or even tripling up BUT you may not have one player four times or five times. Three is the max.
• So for instance you could have:
  • Bont, Davidson, Williams, Sanders, Naughton
  • 2x Bont, 2x Naughton, 1x Sanders
  • 3x Bont, Darcy, West
  • 3x Bont, 2x Darcy

… and so on. But you can’t have (for example) 5x Bont. Or 4x Bont, 1x West.

• If in any game you have selected five different players and each of them kicks at least one goal this is called a Chump. For that you get a 30% point bonus on your entire team's score.
• There are also provisions for substitutes if any of your players are withdrawn, or if you forget to put your entry in - so once you start the season you are guaranteed 5 picks each week, even if you forget. See the full rules below for details.
• You can use these substitute/carryover rules to have a "set-and-forget" team for the whole season if you want to be in the comp but can't be bothered posting a new team each week.

Here's a link to last year's thread for anyone interested in how it works (or to re-live the season if you were a participant).

There's no need to do anything until teams are announced for the first round. You simply enter by posting your five picks in this thread before the game starts. However it'd be handy to know in advance if you're planning to play. Just post here saying you're in.

Late Joining?
You can also join after the first round has been completed. Instead of missing out on all points for that round you can get a randomly generated team retrospectively for that round. This offer is open for the first 3 rounds. After that it’s too late to join.

If you let me know some time after round 1 that you want to be in, I will generate a random team for you for each round you've missed (yes, even after the game has been played) just to keep you in the race. Random teams don't normally do all that well (just ask RandomDog) but they usually pick up a few points which is better than scoring a bagel.

The only limit on this is that any such random team can't retrospectively win the Kelvin (in fact the random team’s score will max out at 90% of the Kelvin winning score).

Who can play?
Anyone can play. You don't have to belong to the WB board. You don't even have to like the Bulldogs. But you can only select WB players each week.

 

[dogwatch]

PIEMAN HQ WILL BE UNATTENDED FOR ABOUT 8-10 WEEKS

One little problem this year is that I am planning to go bush for about 8 weeks and will have little or no internet for most of that time. Intermittent at best and only on a mobile phone. The trip is not yet locked in but is about 80% certain at this stage.

This will be from around mid-April to around mid-June, or roughly Round 6 to Round 15.

This has two significant impacts:
1. It's going to be hard for me to provide finely tuned handicaps for each round.
2. I won't be able to calculate and post the weekly winners (the Kelvins) or the progress scores for the season (Pieman)

Here's how I'm proposing to deal with them:

Handicaps

By the time I hit the track we will be 4-5 games into the season and handicaps should have settled down. So I will create "sticky" handicaps for the full list of 41 players and they will apply for the entire time I'm away.

Significant handicap changes are typically only required if someone strikes a rare burst of goalscoring form, if one of the regular goalscorers becomes unavailable (injured, suspended etc) or if there is a sudden change in the way potential goalscorers are used (eg is Khamis going to be a defender or a forward?)

If such changes are required and I have mobile signal I might be able to post some ad hoc handicap changes. If not ... well everybody can take advantage of whatever bargains they think they can see. Nobody is disadvantaged unless they have a set-and-forget team and don't revisit it periodically. But then that's on them.

Another option is I could appoint someone to fine-tune and publish the weekly handicaps while I'm away. Is anyone interested in doing that? The main requirement is that you are pretty savvy with numbers.
Just PM me if you are interested.

Posting Results

I hope nobody minds, but my plan is simply not to try to post weekly results and progress scores while I'm away. It's just going to be too hard. I'll bring them back up to date by early July.

Anomalies and Disputes

I guess another possibility is that some intervention from the Piemaster might be needed while I'm away but that's a pretty rare event so I'm not going to worry too much about it.


If anyone has any better ideas for any of this, drop me a PM.

 

[dogwatch]

PIEMAN HISTORY AND PAST WINNERS

As nearly everybody would know by now the Pieman is named after the great Footscray (Bulldogs) great full forward of the 1980s Simon "The Pieman" Beasley.

He has kicked more goals for the club (575) than any other player. While Kelvin Templeton's 15 goals against St Kilda is the most in any one game Simon Beasley has the next four best game tallies (3 x 12 goals and 1 x 11). He won the club goalkicking award for 7 consecutive years from 1982 to 1988 and he won the Coleman Medal with 93 goals in H&A games in 1985 in an era of great full forwards. He went on to kick 105 goals that year because he kicked another 12 in the finals. He debuted as a mature player from WA, aged 25 and retired at the age of 32 after 154 games.

Kelvin Templeton is no less decorated but in different ways. He won the club goalkicking 5 times (1976-1980), kicked 15 in a game (1978), kicked 118 in a season (1978) the most by any Bulldog player. By the time he transferred to Melbourne late in his injury-shortened career he had kicked a club record of 494. It's still the fourth highest for the club behind Beasley, Brad Johnson

Brad Johnson

Age

49

Ht

182cm

Wt

87kg

Pos.

Fwd

Career

Season

Last 5

D

19.7

5star

K

14.1

5star

HB

5.6

4star

M

5.9

5star

T

1.6

4star

G

1.5

5star

No current season stats available

D

12.8

4star

K

10.2

4star

HB

2.6

3star

M

2.2

3star

T

1.2

3star

G

0.6

3star

and Chris Grant. Templeton was also a club captain (1982), a club best and fairest (1980) and a Brownlow Medallist (1980). He played 143 games for the Bulldogs and managed only another 34 games and 99 goals for Melbourne before retiring at the age of 28.

So we've named the weekly highest score in the Pieman competition "The Kelvin" in his honour.

The Original Pieman

This is not really footy but it's an interesting piece of Australian trivia while we are talking about Piemen.

William Francis King (1807–1873), better known as ‘The Flying Pieman’, accomplished a series of bizarre athletic feats during the 1840s. King came to New South Wales from his native London in 1829 and worked as a schoolmaster and a private tutor before getting a job as a barman. Around 1834, he went into business as a pieman, selling his wares around Hyde Park and Circular Quay. Here, he became known for his practice of offering pies to passengers boarding the Parramatta steamer and then running the 30 kilometre distance to the boat’s terminus and offering any unsold stock to the same passengers as they disembarked. Between 1842 and 1851, he completed numerous feats and challenges around Sydney, the Hunter Valley, and later, Brisbane. These included walking 2630 kilometres, mainly in the rain, in 39 days; racing the Windsor to Sydney mail coach on foot and twice beating it; carrying a 32 kilogram dog from Campbelltown to Sydney in under seven hours, and hauling an even weightier goat from Sydney to Parramatta in similar time. He walked from Brisbane to Ipswich carrying a 45 kilogram wooden pole and beating the mail coach by an hour; and in Maitland in 1847 had himself horsewhipped to spur him on in the midst of a ten-day, 402 kilometre walking challenge. He returned to Sydney in the 1850s and became a noticeable street character, wandering the streets, selling pies, and issuing proclamations to passers-by. His distinctive attire is said to have included crimson knee-breeches, white stockings, a staff, and a top hat to which either streamers or paper tickets were attached. He died, destitute, at the Liverpool Asylum in 1873, aged sixty-six.

This photo was taken a few years before he died.

Source of photo and text:

William Francis King (1807–1873), better known as ‘The Flying Pieman’, accomplished a series of bizarre athletic feats during the 1840s. King came to New South Wales from his native London in 1829 and worked as a schoolmaster and a private tutor before getting a job as a barman. Around 1834, he...

www.portrait.gov.au


OTHER PIEMEN IN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

• There is a traditional bush dance called The Flying Pieman, possibly named after this bloke. And there was even an eponymous "Flying Piemen" bush band in Melbourne in the the 1970s and 80s. Some of you might have even heard them play.
• The once-common suggestion that Tasmania's Pieman River got its English name from a convict "The Pieman" Alexander Pearce who was responsible for one of the few recorded instances of cannibalism in Australia, is not correct. "The Pieman" was in fact Thomas Kent of Southampton, a pastry-cook who was transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1816. After a long series of offences in the colony, he was sent to the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station in 1822 but subsequently escaped, and was recaptured near the mouth of the river which now bears his nickname. [source: wikipedia]

The Pieman Honour Roll
Here is the list of winners since we started in 2012. You used to get a pie 'n sauce badge under your avatar if you won the Pieman but I'm not sure if that happens any more. I had one for a while but somewhere along the line it disappeared. Is that something we could re-introduce mods?

• 2012 josh the gent
• 2013 grassman75
• 2014 dogwatch
• 2015 lachy
• 2016 StringyDog
• 2017 jaxie1
• 2018 X_box_X
• 2019 Snarls Barkley
• 2020 Charlie Bucket
• 2021 Wocka
• 2022 TiAn_
• 2023 Curly5
• 2024 X_box_X*
• 2025 Snarls Barkley*

* Last year Snarls became only the second player to win the Pieman twice, emulating X_box_X who achieved that honour the year before.

You too have the chance to add your name to this illustrious list!

 

[dogwatch]

PIEMAN 2026 RULES

A. How to Enter

1. Anyone on BF can enter, even people from other boards
2. You enter by making 5 selections of Western Bulldogs players in the Pieman 2025 thread.
3. Those 5 selections can be five different players, or you can pick the same player as many as three times (no more than that though). So the legitimate combinations are 5x1, 2+1+1+1, 2+2+1, 3+1+1 and 3+2.
4. Entries must be lodged with a post in the designated Pieman thread (ie this thread) by match start time.
5. You may change your entry but you must do it with a new post, not by amending your original post. It’s too hard to track whether an entry is legit if I allow edits. It also makes the admin harder.
6. Late in the season (from about Rd 16) you may choose to PM your selections to me instead of posting them here. They still need to be PM'd by match start time of course. That way your selections remain secret until after the game starts. It means that others can't match your selections to stay in front if it's neck and neck in the comp. (Not that anyone here would try to do that!)

B. How Your Score is Calculated and How Winners are Decided

1. Players are allocated a handicap. The more likely the player is to score a goal the lower his handicap. The handicaps are revised according to form and team selections every week and published in the Pieman 2026 thread.
2. Handicaps may sometimes be published early in the week to give you a chance to contemplate this week's entry but the handicaps will be provisional until the WB team is announced. The handicap list will be culled and handicaps finalised after the club's team selection announcement. While the aim is not to change any of the provisional handicaps I do reserve the right to adjust any handicap immediately after team selection (mainly if there are some selection surprises affecting our forwards). I'll post a message here if I do make any changes.
3. You score Pieman points every time one of your players kicks a goal. The number of points you get per goal is equal to the player’s handicap value for that game. So for example if you have Tim English and at the end of the game (with a hypothetical handicap of 13) he has kicked 4 goals then you will get 52 points. However if you had him doubled up you get 104 points, or 156 points if you tripled up.
4. Your weekly Pieman score is the sum of Pieman points accumulated by all 5 of your players in that game, plus any bonus points earned (see below).
5. A Chump is when you have five different players ( a "5x" ) and each of them kicks at least one goal. This earns you a bonus! To be quite clear: you are NOT eligible for the bonus if your five picks include any player more than once. The bonus is 30% of your whole team's score (rounded down if rounding is necessary).
6. [New in 2026] There is also a smaller bonus of 10% if you picked five different players and any four of them got on the goal scoring sheet. However to qualify for this bonus your handicap total (the sum of all your players' handicaps) has to be at least 80. Still looking for a snappy name for this smaller bonus. At the moment it's called a Mini-Chump. It's an incentive bonus to encourage you to go for 5x selections - and not just the usual favourites like Darcy, Naughton and West.
7. The entry with the most Pieman Points for the week is the winner of the Kelvin for that week.
8. The entry with the most Pieman Points accumulated over the entire season including any finals is the winner of the Pieman for the year.
9. If two or more entries have the same number of total points there is no tie-breaker for the Kelvin or the Pieman. The award is shared.

C. Anomalies: Forgotten Entries, Set & Forget Entries, Substitutes, Forgotten Handicaps

1. If you don’t put a new entry in for any given game you automatically get your five picks from the previous game. This is called your default team. This allows you to operate your entry as a “Set-and-Forget” if you don’t want to be bothered posting a new team every week. It also covers you if you genuinely forget to enter your team before the first bounce.
2. If any of your default players from the previous game aren’t playing or if one or more of your picks is a late withdrawal and you don’t update your entry before match start time you get a substitute player in each case. Note that "playing" means being part of the 23 when the game starts, regardless of whether your player gets a run or not.
3. If you do opt for the set-and-forget approach it is likely that the make-up of your team will gradually change over the course of the year due to the occasional need for a substitute player. If one of your original players returns to the senior side you do NOT automatically get him back in your team - you carry on with whoever the substitutes are. You will have to intervene by posting a new team if you want to reset your team. You can do this at any time during the season.
4. Substitute players are allocated to you from the final selected side of 23 as follows:
   • If you have selected a player multiple times (2x or 3x) and he doesn't play then you only get one player as the substitute for that player and your substitute has the same multiple. For example you don't get three different players if your 3x multiple doesn't play. You get one player as a 3x.
   • Your substitute is the player not already in your team who scored the most goals in the last WB game (previous round)
   • If there is more than one such player on the same number of goals from the last game it is the one with the greater handicap value UNLESS we are deciding between players who kicked zero goals last game, in which case it’s the one with the lowest handicap value. (Yes it sounds weird but there’s a rationale for that.)
   • If they are also equal on handicap value it is the one who has scored most goals over the season so far
   • If they remain equal after all of the above it is the one with the lowest jumper number (#1 is lower than #44)
   • Your substitutes for any selected multiples (3x then 2x) are determined first, then the single (1x) selections.
   • If the substitute is required in Round 1 (ie where there is no prior game) or if for some reason the above method doesn’t deliver a valid substitute then it’s the player who is NOT in your team who has the lowest handicap value, and then if a further tie-breaker is required it's the one with the lower jumper number
   • We repeat the same substitute selection procedure in any given round for as many times as you need to add substitute players.
5. If you forgot or somehow failed to put your entry in for any rounds up to and including round 3 there is obviously no previous week's entry that would constitute your default team. If you let me know you want to be in the comp I will generate a random team for you after the event from the 22 who played. Random teams don't normally do very well but they typically register a few points so it keeps your season tally ticking over and it means that despite missing the start you have less ground to catch up over the season. The only provisos are:
   
   • (1) you cannot win the Kelvin with one of these retrospectively chosen teams
   • (2) you cannot receive more than 90% (rounded down) of the points scored by the Kelvin winner that week. If your random team would have scored more than that it is simply capped at 90% of the Kelvin winning score.
   • (3) The offer only applies to Rounds 1 to 3. You can still join the comp after that but you will only get a retrospective random team for the first three weeks.
6. The aim will be to publish a new handicap list each week, although once the season has settled down the weekly variations will probably only be minor. However if for any reason the handicaps aren’t published by match start time (unlikely) the players will retain the same handicaps they had in their previous senior game. If a player is playing his first game for the season AND no handicaps have been published he will be allocated a default handicap of 20.
7. The published results are generally final but if you think there’s been an error or some other anomaly let me know and I’ll consider whether a correction is justified.
8. If any situation arises that is not covered by these rules I’ll try to resolve it within the spirit of the competition.
9. Similarly if it becomes apparent that a rule change or a new rule is required during the season (hopefully not!) I'll try to do that with minimal impact and within the spirit of the comp.

D. Fun

• Be competitive but make sure you have fun! That’s what it's for.

 

[dogwatch]

Who's in for 2026

I'll update this list as people let me know ...

dogwatch (yeah, I'll have to rely on carryover teams for about 8 weeks)
RandomDog
Wocka
Jaxie1
Sharkey66
Northern Dogs
grassman75
TedDougChris
Fossie 32
Shacf501
fargy
TiAn_
Buckingham
Floridog
WABulldog
BulldogMuscle
LordC
SPower
Bulldog rick
lachy
theAthenian
Viva_Loca
Struggle
lateniter
Doggies 13
Dogs_r_us
Kermit
Curly5
54Bulldog16
Charlie Bucket
...

 

[Wocka]

IN

 

[jaxie1]

Yep I’m in.

 

[Sharkey66]

I'm In

Enjoy your trip, happy enough for no intervention while your away

 

[Northern Dogs]

In

 

[grassman75]

Do you need to even ask me DW?

 

[TedDougChris]

I was rubbish at this before and I'm sure I'll be rubbish at this again.

In !!

 

[Fossie 32]

 

[Shacf501]

I'm in thanks mate

 

[fargy]

I’m in thanks, Dogwatch. And also I’m ok with sticky handicaps unless there is someone is keen to jump in and help out. Either way

 

[TiAn_]

 

[Buckingham]

Count me in

 

[Floridog]

Count me in

 

[WAbulldog]

In cheers Dogwatch

 

[WAbulldog]

I was rubbish at this before and I'm sure I'll be rubbish at this again.

In !!

 

[BulldogMuscle]

Im in.
Another wooden spoon incoming I suppose.

 

[LordC]

Count me in

 

[SPower]

Chrs, I'm in too

 

[X_box_X]

Correction:

Tried your hardest.

 

[Bulldog rick]

I'm in

 

[dogwatch]

[reserved post for The Rules of Pieman 26]


Before I post the full rules, there is ONE tweak I'm thinking of.

Chumps (getting five different goalscorers) are worth a 30% bonus on your raw score.
Since Chumps were pretty hard to get last year I was contemplating a consolation bonus of say 10% if:

• You got four out of five goalscorers.
• Your handicap total was at least 80 (handicap total is the sum of all player handicaps in your team)
• You selected 5 different players (ie you aren't eligible if you doubled up on one player and went 2+1+1+1).

The aim is to encourage people to go for chumps - but not if you only go for the favourites like Darcy, West and Naughton.

It's just a thought bubble at this stage but I reckon I could program it easily enough. I might do some detailed analysis but it looks like there would be a small number of these mini-chumps most weeks, based on 2025 results.

Does anybody like the idea? Does anybody hate it?

I've had a look at this and I've decided to go with it. It's already programmed for 2026.

If it had applied in the 2025 season there would have been:

• An average of 4 "mini-chumps" each week
• A max of 10 mini-chumps in any given round
• A minimum of 0 mini-chumps in any given round (that would have occurred only 3 times)
• An average bonus of 9.95 points for those who got a mini-chump
• The highest single mini-chump for the year would have been 22 points.

No Kelvin winners would have been changed, but in a few rounds a mini-chump would have vaulted someone into second or third from outside the top 3.

So the weekly impact is modest but the real value may be cumulative. That is, if someone takes five different players every week they might end up with 100 points or so extra on their season tally. For instance grassman75 would have had 6 mini-chumps worth 84 extra points over the season. That's just one that I noticed so I checked each of his weekly results for 2025. There might have been some who would have done even better out of it (but I'm not going back to check everybody's weekly results!)

Since the final margin between the Pieman winner and the runner-up was was less than 100 pts last year those mini-chump points could become crucial. It might also influence people to change their weekly selection strategy.

tl:dr
It might not make a lot of difference but it can't hurt. It might add a little sprinkle of extra spice each week.


The only thing that needs to be settled is what to call it. I'm not keen on "mini-chump" but haven't thought of anything better yet.

Any bright ideas?