I am coming off one of those weekends I would rather forget.

My focus was on the Currie Cup where I never fancied anything strongly but still found myself getting involved.  In Friday night’s game between the Free State and Lions, I actually fancied the Lions (+14.5), a bet which arrived comfortably.  Instead of betting on the handicap though I let my situation dictate my bets and as I could only watch the first half I went for 30 or more points by half time. It lost and I was off to a bad start.

I liked the Sharks to beat the Pumas by 8 points or more and the way they started on the Saturday certainly looked encouraging.  They failed to keep up their intensity though and it was the Pumas who came through to win the match. I didn’t do a lot of damage on the Sharks handicap bet but I had a massive play that there would be 8 tries or more in the match and after a fast start I knew I was in trouble when the Pumas kept on kicking for 3 points.

Well down by this point I resisted the temptation to chase in the game between the Bulls and Griquas where I fancied the Griquas to push the Bulls close.  It is amazing how when your confidence is down you second guess yourself and instead of going for Griquas I ended up convincing myself that their points quote was too high and backed them to score under 29 points.  They ended up hammering the Bulls 37-15 and for the second time on the weekend I lost money in a game where my original fancy had actually arrived.

Luckily that was in as far as the weekends rugby went and I must say I am looking forward to the return of the Rugby Championships this week.

The Springboks are 4/10 favourites to lift the Trophy and they will know exactly what they have to do by the time they kick off with Australia playing New Zealand earlier in the day.  General consensus is that New Zealand will beat the 10.5 point handicap against Australia and I am expecting a bonus point win from them.

Argentina have put in a couple of sub-par performances of late and I think the Boks will edge a close one in Salta.

Twitter: @BrentGraham

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 8 August 2019.

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