Eight..

Dublin scoring eight points in a game of GAA, Man United scoring eight goals in a game of soccer, the worlds gone mad..

I wont say much about the soccer, apart from the fact I feel awful sorry for the amount of abuse Arsene Wenger is getting, fair enough things arent going well but he deserves the utmost respect IMO, hes done a hell of a lot for Arsenal - all that good work doesnt just get threw away after three games. But sometimes too, you have to love Wayne Rooney..









Banter!

Anyway, Dublin conspired to feck up my HT/FT time bet, I'm not complaining too much as they didnt cover the handicap either. Not sure what to make of the performance, but a couple of good/bad points..
1) IMO, they were completely bottling it the first half, and would have got hammered by a stronger team.
2) They didnt score a point from play until the 59th minute. At any level, thats shite.
3) I thought they did well to comeback from three points down midway through the second half - I wouldnt have given them the backbone to do that before the game. Deserve a bit of credit there because that was very un-Dublin-like over the last few years.
4) Donegal only scored six points, that doesnt win games, so Dublin were lucky in that sense. Having said that Dublin only scored eight, that doesnt tend to win games either!
5) Donegal have a good defense yes, but Kildare scored 14 points against them in the Quarters, you'd expect Dublin could have done the same, at least, so it was pretty poor by anyones standards.
6) Obviously Kerry will be favourites for the final, and I reckon that will suit Dublin being underdogs. They definitely have the talent to win, whether or not they have the balls is another thing. Playing against anyone else today and we'd be sat here saying "classic Dublin bottling it again."
7) Looking forward to the Kerry v Dublin final!

So that was minus €90.50 with Paddy Power anyway, but the cricket has gone well this week. Someone commented last week "Bet you wish there was an England test every week" I really do! Life would be great if that was the case.







I said last Sunday I had a sneaky feeling for the draw and that was stopping me having all my green on England - very lucky I didnt because the draw went from 3.3 to 1.11 before India collapsed, could have easily ruined the book with that move.















The next Test series is between Sri Lanka and Australia, although I've clocked that its actually monsoon season, or as they call it, intermonsoonal season.. "The second season occurs in October and November, the intermonsoonal months. During this season, periodic squalls occur and sometimes tropical cyclones bring overcast skies and rains to the southwest, northeast, and eastern parts of the island." What sort of fecking eejit schedules a Test series in a monsoon season? FFS. No real surprise to see the market already like this days before the start..

EDIT: I copied and pasted the wrong season, doh! The first is from mid-May to October, when winds originate in the southwest, bringing moisture from the Indian Ocean. When these winds encounter the slopes of the Central Highlands, they unload heavy rains on the mountain slopes and the southwestern sector of the island.






Its at that stage of the year where laying the draw sub evens on the 1st day isnt such a good idea anymore, well not as much as the English summer anyway. It starts a 5-30 in the morning too, joy! Another small point about the possible pitch, the last Test match played at Galle saw Windies post a score of 580, you can be pretty sure the pitch is flat when Windies score 580..! That was the 15th of November 2010. If I was Sri Lanka I'd prepare a complete turner - Aus didnt play spin well in the T20s and ODIs, plus they havent got any real class spin bowling either.

Speaking of T20s, yesterday we had the English finals day - both semi finals finished ties, the first one didnt overly bother me, the second one did though, Somerset needed 6 off 8, then 2 off 4 FFS..






Head in hands.

Naturally lots of talk about covering the tie afterwards. Its all only a matter of opinion and whatever side of the fence you sit on really, I personally dont cover it, but 90%+ of the time I'd have all my green on one team anyway so it wouldnt make much sense. Statistically speaking, before yesterday there have been 39 ties in 2367 T20 matches, 39 goes into 2367 60.69 times, so in order to be getting "value" (I cant believe I just used that word, ugh!) you'd want to be getting matched on Betfair at 65. Now the actual chances of getting matched at 65 on a low liquidity market are pretty slim IMO, you'd almost have to back it before the game starts or during the first innings or something - you might not even be equal green match odds at that stage. After the three games, 41 goes into 2370 57.80 times, so you'd want 60 on Betfair, still the actual chances of getting fully matched are slim.

Plenty of people yesterday said "oh, you could have easily covered at 1.02 blah blah blah.." Well, youre backing a 65/1 shot at 50/1, and people always bang on about "value" thats not great is it, losing 15 points. My opinion on value is, everyones views of what is "value" will be different naturally so theres no point for all the arguing, just get on with it.

The only way you can learn to do something is by doing it anyway IMO, so after a while you learn what to do and what not to do, you cant just walk into a room and have someone tell you "thats value, that isnt.." because when theyre not there, and every single game is different, what do you do then? It just doesnt work like that because everyone thinks and sees the world differently, you can never have someone tell you what to think. And if you think about it, if everyone disagrees with you, you'll get a bigger price and win more money..