Like many sport betters I limped out of this weekend’s Super Rugby.  It was a weekend of shocks with the Sunwolves beating the Chiefs away in the upset of the season so far. The Stormers and the Bulls both won away as underdogs and there is little doubt that Super Rugby Week 3 belonged to the bookmakers.

I was once again tied up on the weekend and didn’t bet a lot, but when I did bet the results were remarkably consistent, I lost every time.  My main bet was the Sharks to win by 7 or more and that one never even got out of the starting blocks.

Along came Monday and Varsity Cup Rugby.  One of the Goodforthegame Forum regulars, RuggaBugga, had put up Shimlas (-10.5) points against Ikeys as a great bet.  Such is his reputation with the bookmakers that his bet was enough to move the line up from (-10.5) to (-12.5) and that is where I got on. 

The game was not televised and as a rule I usually like to bet on matches that I can actually watch, but in this case I was forced to follow on Twitter for updates.  Fortunately a member of the press was updating and when the Shimlas raced to a 44-7 lead shortly after the break I, like many others was mentally banking the winnings.  I am not sure of what happened from there but the home team appeared to go to sleep and every time I refreshed my Twitter feed, the Ikeys had scored another try. 

With just 3 minutes to go Shimlas led 44-35 and I was delighted when I saw that they had scored to go 51-35 ahead with hardly any time to play. The first Tweet with the full-time score showed Shimlas 51 Ikeys 38 and my first thought was I had dodged a bullet with a missed Ikeys conversion at the death.  I had not had time to celebrate the win when I saw another post saying the final score was 51-40, meaning I had lost my bet by the narrowest of margins. 

As it turned out the final Ikeys try was worth 7 points and not 5 and it was scored off the kick off from their own half. Losing a bet narrowly is bad but winning it and then losing it must be the worst beat ever! 

Twitter: @BrentGraham

 
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 7th of March 2019.

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