After a rather shaky Rugby World Cup to date I enjoyed a great weekend with virtually all of my bets arriving. In fact the only one that went belly up was Scotland to beat Japan, my final play of the weekend.

The turning point for me came on Friday night with the Cheetahs at home to Munster in the Pro 14. I had started the weekend off with a winner in Friday’s World Cup game and was following the thoughts of the guys on our YouTube Rugby Show, “The Handicap” as well as the Goodforthegame Forum and was heavily involved in the Cheetahs. Rather than back them on the handicap I took them to score 34 points or more in the match and had a decent sized bet.

After a slow start the Cheetahs finally started scoring points and heading into the last 10 minutes I had a good chance of landing the spoils. To my surprise my daughter and her friend came and joined me for the final 10 minutes and seeing how excited I was getting they enquired what financial interest I had in the match? I told them my bet and reluctantly how much I had on and I could see their interest had suddenly peaked.

As the final minute of the match started, it looked like I was going to lose this bet by the narrowest of margins with the Cheetahs on 33 points. They could have kicked the ball out, but continued to run at their opponents and I leapt from the couch as they scored a try after the hooter.

The girls were delighted with the win and I could see my daughter’s friend’s eyes that she was weighing up Sports Betting as a possible career choice. This was not my first rodeo and even as I celebrated I watched the TV to make sure the try was actually awarded and to my horror they wanted to review the grounding. The girls were subjected to the sight of me pacing up and down the room until finally the try was awarded and the bet was banked.

I am just hoping that my daughter’s friend, who I will call “Bladsy” to protect her identity, doesn’t look back at this night from a therapist’s couch one day and identify this game as the trigger to a lifetime of gambling.

Twitter: @BrentGraham

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 17 October 2019.

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