I love playoff rugby and was looking forward to this past weekend’s Super Rugby Quarter-Finals.  I fancied the Chiefs, Waratahs, Crusaders and Lions on their respective handicaps and was planning to structure my bets accordingly. 

The weekend got off to a decent start when a stunning Chiefs comeback including 2 tries in the last 3 minutes saw me sneak in on the plus 5.5 handicap against the Hurricanes. 

I decided at the last minute not to get involved in the Waratahs game and initially this looked an excellent decision as they fell well behind the Highlanders but then stormed back to win the game causing a minor upset and leaving me a bit annoyed at sitting the game out. 

I was very confident that the Sharks would take a hammering in Christchurch and lumped on the Crusaders minus 19.5.  To the Sharks credit they played well in the early stages but never looked like beating the odds-on favourites to win the title.  The Crusaders stormed away to win by 30 and I was well up for the weekend with just the Lions game to come. 

At this point I started second guessing myself and switched from the Lions -9.5 to the Jaguares to score 12 points or more in the first half and 25 points or more in the match.  Things started brightly for me and they were 6-0 up after 6 minutes but never added any more points until deep into the first half when they got another penalty where for all money I thought they should have gone for the try.  My bigger interest was on the over 24.5 points and when the Jaguares stormed out of the blocks in the second half to take their tally to 23 it looked like a certain winner.  

Somehow whatever momentum they had, disappeared as the Lions drew clear to win by 17 points with the Jaguares failing to add another point despite looking nailed on to score a try after the hooter.

Although I managed to break square on the weekend I found myself grumpier than normal, as if I had just stuck to my guns and gone with my original fancy, the Lions, I would be sitting pretty heading into the semi-finals.

Looking ahead to this weekend, the Crusaders minus 6.5 against the Hurricanes is my best bet.

Twitter: @BrentGraham

 
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 26th July 2018.

Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and sends a free weekly e-mail list just CLICK HERE to register