Coming into this Rugby World Cup I had a long term strategy which was to go low on points as I expected conditions in particular to trouble the teams.
Based on the first round of matches you would expect that I have made some money and while my long term bets might be in decent positions I have in fact given the bookmakers a significant head start.
Sunday’s match between Ireland and Scotland was the first one I got heavily involved in. I backed the Irish to win by 1-12 points, thinking it would be a close game and when they led by 16 at the break instead of just letting that bet ride I decided to back Scotland (+19.5) on the handicap. Scotland pressed for the first 20 minutes of the second half, but failed to score and the inevitable happened with Ireland then pulling further ahead giving me a fairly significant dent in my betting budget.
I then fancied England to come out of the blocks quickly against Tonga and backed them to lead by 20 or more points at the break. That went belly up and I was seriously grumpy by the end of that match as chasing my losses proved very costly.
These opening World Cup matches have been quite tough to call because some of the bigger teams have been content to get the bonus point before switching off and the smaller teams have certainly punched above their weight.
I am hoping Tuesday’s match between Russia and Samoa will be something of a watershed for me as I backed Samoa to score 6 tries or more. The bet looked in big trouble from the start and not only did Samoa score only 1 try in the first half, but they were lucky to avoid 2 red cards.
In humid conditions they then started playing some superb rugby and after 22 minutes of the second-half they had 5 tries and I was only just shy of a much needed win. Russia then dominated and held on to the ball, for what seemed like ages before I finally got my chance in the 80th minute when the Samoan right wing scored a memorable try evading multiple tacklers to get over for the five pointer and hopefully turn my World Cup around.
There is plenty of rugby this coming weekend and for those interested South Africa are (-58.5) points against Namibia.
Twitter: @BrentGraham
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 26 September 2019.
Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and sends a free weekly e-mail list just CLICK HERE to register