This past weekend started very well for me and on Friday I landed my opening bet being 44 points or less in the Blues v Bulls game.  I couldn’t watch the match, but was tracking the live scores and was relieved when the final whistle went at 22-22 meaning my bet had just snuck in.  

One of my main plays for the weekend was the Brumbies to beat the Sunwolves by 14 points or more and the Australian outfit delivered in some style winning by 23 points in the end.  I was nicely up heading into the Chiefs v Crusaders game in Fiji and I had a double ending on Crusaders to win by 10 or more and also backed the Crusaders to score 32 points or more.  They raced to a 20-0 lead and I was already plotting my strategy for the rest of the weekend as all indications were I would be well up.

The old saying “never count your chickens before they hatch” applied though and the Crusaders not only lost the game by 13 points, but they somehow failed to reach the 32 point mark and both of my bets had lost. I was back square for the weekend.  Things were to get worse as I backed the Sharks to score at least 22 points against the Hurricanes and despite playing a very poor match it looked like I might get out of jail on this one.  They failed to get the final try that I needed though and at this point I started chasing and had a massive bet on the Stormers over 22.5 points. 

I watched the final 10 minutes on my phone sitting at the table at my son’s rugby awards dinner and with the Stormers on 22 points exactly (they missed a kickable conversion) I needed only one more score to land my bet.  They camped on the Lions line, but when they conceded a penalty 3 minutes from time I knew my race was run and switched off. 

Thankfully I landed a panic bet on Liverpool to beat Tottenham in the UEFA Champions League final and also cleaned up nicely on Sunday in the Barbarians game and the Giro d’Italia, meaning I managed to finish slightly ahead of the bookmakers this weekend. It will be a while before I can forgive those Crusaders though.

Twitter: @BrentGraham

 
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 6th of June 2019.

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