Welcome profit down to luck of the draw

Not for nothing was picking out potential draws the cornerstone of Britain’s football gambling habit for decades. The people who organised the pools knew well what a tricky business it is and while the odd punter got rich along the way, the bulk of the wealth was accumulated by the likes of the Moores family who founded Littlewoods back in the twenties.

My uncle Con, a Scot from just outside Glasgow once thought he had hit the jackpot when, while watching the results come in one Saturday afternoon down in his local, he realised that he had successfully predicted eight score draws which gave him 24 points and, in theory, a jackpot. What actually managed to escape him was that there seems to have been rather a lot of score draws that week and so, he recalled much later as we sat in the same pub with many of his friends and family, he spent a lot of money buying drink over the course of the night only to discover the following Monday that he had won just £35.

“Tirtay fave poonds!” he kept repeating incredulously as those around cried with laughter at the memory of it all. There was more to the story, or else it gave rise to a few others but either way I couldn’t fathom what came next as, due a mixture of drink and high spirits, the talk became faster, more relaxed and completely unfathomable.

Anyway, I was thinking of Con – who, sadly, has been dead a good few years now – on Saturday as I sat staring at teletext watching the progress of the Birmingham, Stoke and Middlesbrough games. The game at the Britannia finished scoreless which you could sort of make a case for but the other two ended in a 2-2 scoreline which, when you think about afterwards, is really not something you make a logical argument for predicting prior to kick off.

Gordon Strachan’s side, indeed, came from behind to lead alarmingly close to the end which caused me some upset but ultimately all three ended in stalemates which, along with better than one goal margins of victory for Spurs and Liverpool, set me well on the way to what I think was my best weekend of the season so far with a profit of slight over €200.

It would have been better still had Galway United not conceded a goal to Bray or, as I have been considering doing for some weeks now, I had put a small portion of my stake money on an accumulator involving all of my selections but hey, this is no time for complaining. I am more than 50 per cent up on the thousand euro I have actually been working with since the summer for the first time and in a decent position to make a crack at matching last year’s 106 per cent profit.

All of which, of course, might quickly come to seem rather fanciful if I hit any sort of bad run but we shall push quickly on. I’m about to head for the airport en route for Stamford Bridge this evening followed by Cheltenham tomorrow so I won’t dally but I’m going to go for all four home teams in this week’s Champions League games to win (even though only Chelsea strictly need to in order to progress) with a portion of my money going on them all to overcome handicaps at around twice the odds.

Elsewhere, it’s a couple of straightforward doubles on the league action. I can’t help thinking it’s all going to seem like something of a sideshow over the coming days – at least on the betting front .

So, happy horseracing; a sport where picking out draws really would require a bit of talent.

Bets

€15 on Chelsea, Seville, Barcelona and Bordeaux to beat Inter, CSKA, Stuttgart and Olympiakos respectively @ 4.64.

€5 on Chelsea (-0.5/1), Seville (-0.5/1), Barca (-1.5) and Bordeaux (-0.5/1) all to win as above @ 9.37.

€15 double on Ipswich (0) to win at Wtford and QPR (+0.5) to win at Reading @ 3.99.

€15 double on Newcastle (-1.5) to beat Scunthorpe and Aston Villa to win at Wigan @ 4.26.

Categories: Soccer