South Africa has a host of reputable online bookmakers, but they are generally reliant on their overseas counterparts to set markets and betting lines. Globally there is just too much sport for any bookmaker to price up individually and while the odd bookmaker in South Africa sticks their neck out with early rugby prices, they generally follow the markets which are set overseas.

This past weekend saw the Green v Gold Springbok trial and while I was reluctant to get involved in the betting on the match, given that the result not that important, But I sat up and took notice when the points lines opened up. A few of the local bookmakers priced up first at 57 points and at those levels I was considering going unders, as I expected this to be a typically tight South African game between players who were eager to impress the coaches. To my amazement the line opened at 70 points overseas and it wasn’t long until the local bookmakers followed suit and shifted the line into the high 60’s.

I imagine the overseas bookmakers were picturing the trial game played in the same spirit as the Super Fan Saturday the week before, but this was unlikely to be the case. It turned out to be a dour affair, but I wasn’t complaining having had a solid bet on under 69.5 points and I never broke a sweat as after a slow start there only 34 points in total in the match. Here’s hoping the offshore bookmakers price up some of our points lines in the Super Rugby Unlocked Tournament which gets going this weekend.

As a side note, my weekend was perfectly rounded off when Primoz Roglic won the Liege-Bastogne-Liege Cycling on Sunday. I backed him at 16/1 and while riding well he didn’t quite have the legs to attack in the final climb as I had expected. He ended up sprinting with two favourites, Alaphilippe and Hirschi as well as Tour de France winner Pogacar and he was the underdog of the quartet. There was drama to come though and Alaphilippe veered sharply left in his sprint basically taking out Hirschi and Pogacar and thinking the race was won he celebrated too early only for Roglic to sneak through to pip him on the line.

A fortunate but cracking end to the weekend!

Twitter: @BrentGraham.

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 8 October 2020.

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