So, I am now home. Well, what an evening Saturday was.
So here's how I did with my guesses;
Ukraine - The winner! Great success!
Italy - 6th, this is a song i personally disliked, but much like Switzerland (wrongly in that case) thought was definitely the 'thing' for the audience.
Germany - 25th, aka 100% the opposite of top 10, they couldn't have not been top 10 any harder. I am gutted for Malik though, it was such a great song. Twitter reactions also seem to suggest it isn't just me with this mindset, I hope Malik doesn't take it to heart too much.
United Kingdom - 2nd, Great success! - I knew we were going in with good odds, but never did I think we'd have come second, and won the Jury vote, if not the public one.
Spain - 3rd, not bad at all!
Norway - 10th, I didn't expect this one to be barely top 10, i was kind of expecting a top 5 result there, but it still counts as a +1 in my rankings
Finland - 21st, this is a song I started disliking when announced, but it grew on me. Apparently not many others, and as suggested in this thread earlier on, apparently no one was indeed wanting more of The Rasmus!
Switzerland - 17th, well, this is clearly one i thought wrong of, I wasn't a fan of the song that much compared to some, i had just guessed it was 'the thing' viewers would go for.
Sweden - 4th, Was there any doubt of Sweden not coming top 10? I didn't think so!
Serbia - 5th, i thought Serbia was going to end in such a low position after the jury votes, but Konstrakta was clearly a public favourite. I can't even describe what about it makes me love it, but somehow I do!
7/10 - That isn't too bad, especially after my 5/10 start to the semis! Although my misses were... really big misses!
Chrill wrote: 15 May 2022 20:29
With all that is happening in Ukraine, and the scale of hosting this event, we will likely be getting info pretty soon about hosting, perhaps during the summer. UK finishing 2nd could mean they are offered to host, but Ukraine may also extend the question to a neighbour such as Poland (who have been very helpful to Ukraine immigrants) or Moldova (who are also targeted by Russia, plus did incredibly well in the competition).
If Ukraine do need to pass on the hosting opportunity, which I can see a real risk of, given no part of Ukraine, at least at present, is 'safe' from the ongoing events, even the far Western parts of the country have been aerial bombarded at least somewhat. I hope the EBU give a free choice of who their preferred host is to Ukraine, rather than them just saying "OK well UK were second, so it is them".
Also of note, apparently during Semi Final 2, there was a lot of backscratching potentially going on, with 6 countries (Poland, San Marino, Azerbaijan, Montenegro, Georgia & Romania) being given 'substituted aggregated' jury results, a claim of Belgium's Flemish based 'VRT' broadcaster was that they'd all agreed to vote for each other, although it was flagged as anomalous by the EBUs systems.
Lastly, the background arches were intended to move about, however during rehearsals it was discovered it was seemingly faulty and didn't move very freely, and was prone to hiccups in smoothness or... working at all. This 'Kinetic Sun' (in case you were as confused as i am about that term, the Eurovision blog 'wiwibloggs'
describes it here with intended functionality videos. So if you noticed during the finals there was this black arch that did nothing, well that is why, the lights on it still worked and were moveable/recolorable though for each performance. Although, some acts that were using background displays had them cut off, sometimes really badly, in the middle, where the rings are. The UK commentators usually pick up on things like this and tell the audience, but this time it seems the 3 commentators (2 doing semis, and 1 for the final) didn't tell us this! So maybe the same for other countries announcers too.
Overall, another great Eurovision year despite the above notes. I look forward to 2023, whether it is in Ukraine or elsewhere!
