A delighted Chris Pratt has been presented with his cheque for £500, as the Champion of the Pontefract Collieries World Cup Pundit Competition, 2010.

The competition – which allowed participants to give their predictions about the outcome of the 2010 Fifa World Cup - encouraged pundits to pit their wits against each other. In all, there were hundreds of entries, as people predicted the winner, runner-up, third and fourth-placed teams, top goalscorer and Player of the Tournament, together with such other interesting predictions such as the winners of each group and the entire England line-up for the group match against Slovenia, with points awarded for correct answers.

The competition proved a raging success, with entries from all over Yorkshire, and several people submitting multiple entries. Chris Pratt won with a score of 60, the same total as Runner-Up Paul Fothergill (father of our very own star striker, Carl, who languished in the wake of his father on a miserable 35!). However, the top two were seperated by the tie-breaker, which was the total number of goals scored throughout the tournament. Chris guessed 153, whereas Paul reckoned there would be 126. In fact, there were 145, which meant that Chris won the competition, whereas Paul had to be consoled by the runner’s up cheque for £200. Third-placed Ben Young scored 57.

The winner correctly predicted that Spain would win the tournament, with Holland as the runner-up. (This scored him 18 points in total). He also named David Villa as Top Scorer, together with 12 out of the 16 teams to qualify from the group stages. However, even the champion was bewildered by France – predicting that the 1998 Champions would come third, whereas they imploded and failed to escape their group!

Paul also correctly predicted the winner and runner-up, but could have done without naming England as a semi-finalist. He was not the only entrant to fall foul of optimism, with over 10% of people predicting that England would win the tournament (although 34% correctly predicted Spain!)

The scores ranged from 27 to 60, with the lowest scorers being flummoxed by the poor performances by the French, the Italians, Brazil, Argentina and – of course, Capello’s crew! By contrast, Holland exceeded expectations and were hardly fancied to reach the final, while not one single person foresaw eventual winner Diego Forlan being named as Player of the Tournament.

To see whether you are one of the Top 100 Pundits, see the league table below…