The Dead Cow

England 6 - 0 Panama Japan 1 - 1 Senegal Poland 1 - 3 Colombia

Belgium 3 - 1 Tunisia South Korea 0 - 1 Mexico Germany 0 - 0 Sweden

Brazil 1 - 1 Costa Rica Iceland 3 - 0 Nigeria Serbia 1 - 2 Switzerland

Denmark 2 - 0 Australia France 2 - 1 Peru Argentina 4 - 1 Croatia

Jon Hiseman definitely dead now. German obit

I'm currently enjoying the new Half Man Half Biscuit album, I'm liking this song in particular.

The Jon Hiseman Facebook page shows no update on Hiseman's condition, however Jan Akkerman tweeted to say that Hiseman died last night. I trust Jan Akkerman.

I had in my mind that around this time Ian Toothill would have his last big chance of receiving a qualifying obit, as tomorrow will be the anniversary of him conquering Everest. Anyway, his ashes have been scattered on Ben Nevis and the BBC have an article on it, only it's under Sheffield & South Yorkshire.

Well I had some pretty good statistics in my favour. Prior to this year, 16.66% of podium positions were taken by the mothers of pop stars who achieved much success in the 1990's. You can't argue with those statistics.

Aye, but not before Irene Jones. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/manic-street-preachers-stars-mum-14735142 I make this my first dead pool win.

Following last year's pick of Gloria Estefan's mum, I shall pick the mother of Manics' bassist Nicky Wire (and poet Patrick Jones) - Irene Jones.

Aye, and just being a New Zealander guaranteed him a Daily Mail Wires obit.

Margaret Atwood? Alice Munro? Joyce Carol Oates? J.M. Coetzee?

I'm enjoying some of the solo work of Mark Mulcahy (of Miracle Legion and Polaris) at the moment, a criminally underappreciated singer and songwriter in my opinion. Of his solo career his album Fathering is quite excellent, though I think my favourite solo song of his would be this one, predominantly because of the french horn.

Buggery bollocks

I know, this team position seems to be more of a revolving door than the Sunderland managerial position.

As former Indiana American football coach Bill Mallory is scratched off my shortlist due to death, another more fringy but interesting name makes their way on, whom I shall make an inquiry about regarding their eligibility. I have to say, this has been a rather disappointing round thus far as I was expecting something of a bloodbath on both mine and Sir Creep's sides, but with 5 days left I'm just relieved to still be holding a lead at this point. Edit: OK, so the aforementioned fringe pick does not pass the fame criteria, so I replaced them with Alan Bean,..

I've been listening to a lot of Jason Molina's music today, this song in particular has been on repeat.

I forgot about him, I discard my shortlist once I've selected my team for the next round, so a lot of names are sent to limbo. Though even if I did hold on to him I probably wouldn't have picked him, as there don't seem to be any updates on his health between being released from ICU and him dying. If there were I'd have probably rediscovered him anyhow.

He was on my DL Cup shortlist a couple of rounds back, you're lucky I forgot about him.

Neil Simon

Nawaz is on my team as well, so she's irrelevant in our tie. I reckon my best bets are with Lang, Silsbee and McCain. The Vietnamese folk could go any day, but they could also linger on for months. Thakur was a mistake, Salisbury I think might be too early and Da-Ren seems fine for now. I do agree that'll be a very tight round, I wouldn't be surprised at all if it went down to a tiebreak.

Good luck Creep. But yer on the back foot as of now as recently retired basketball coach and unique pick for me Larry Hunter has died. Awaiting obit.

I didn't think blogs counted as a QO, whether part of a UK newspaper or not. But maybe I've misinterpreted the rules.

Robert M Pirsig acquired the quality of metaphysics one year ago at the age of 88.