|
|
|
||
|
Aussie
Rules
|
Centrebet Capers
AUSTRALIAN RULES The Western Bulldogs huge upset win over Brisbane on Saturday night was the only real result for the weekend which saw seven favourites all salute the judge. Punters got off on the right foot when Melbourne drew away to beat Adelaide by 24 points on Friday night. This game carried one of the week’s biggest bets, $40,000 on Melbourne conceding 17.5 points start at $1.90. All three favourites won on Sunday which saw punters pretty happy. Our worst result was when Fremantle thrashed Collingwood by 112 points. The Dockers had bets of $15,000 and $10,000 placed on the line of -29 ½ as well as a bet of $30,000 at -36 ½ at $2.10. For the first time this year there has been money for Richmond ($1.25) mainly through the multiples with nearly $40,000 placed on them to defeat Collingwood coupled up with Geelong, who are $1.22 to beat Carlton on Friday night. The Blues copped a decent bagging in the press after being beaten by Richmond last week and that has seen two $5000 bets placed on Geelong to beat them by more than 27 points. The big game of the round will be on Saturday when St Kilda travel west to play the undefeated West Coast. The Eagles are near on invincible at home but are reasonably priced at $1.48 with St Kilda at $2.60. West Coast remain premiership favourites at $3.50. St Kilda ($4.50) didn't lose too many admirers when beaten by Geelong as they had several out through injury but the big mover has been Richmond. The Tigers were around the $101 mark before the season started and were one of the better backed wooden spoon sides at $5. Now, five wins down the track they are being mooted as a strong finals chance and are into $26 to win the flag. RUGBY LEAGUE Despite five favourites winning last weekend punters didn't fare too well when several plunges went astray. On top of that the City v Country match also went against the trend, continuing the poor run punters have been experiencing this season. Normally the City v Country matches don't inspire much betting but Country were very heavily supported. The $1.65 was taken with a bet of $40,000 from a NSW client and the handicap of -3 ½ attracted bets of $10,000 and $5000. Things were looking rosy for the bookies at half time when the City boys led 22-0 but Country staged a second half comeback to get within four points before City went on to win 29-22. Betting on the weekend matches was thrown into chaos after the rep game and we got off to a very ordinary start when Gasnier and Cooper donned the St George Illawarra colours unexpectedly on Saturday evening against Souths. The Dragons were heavily backed with bets of $40,000 and $20,000 at -10 ½. At least we were out of our misery early as the Dragons jumped straight to the front and won easily 42-10. Brisbane were backed for a stack to beat the Doggies last weekend with the handicap moving from -7 ½ to start at -10 ½ in favour of Brisbane. While took some big money for Brisbane to win the game outright there was just as much again on the Broncos conceding the start, including one bet of $20,000. In an astonishing last minute, Darren Lockyer kicked a field goal to put Brisbane ahead by one and then the Broncos scored a converted try from a short kick off to win the match by seven not quite enough for those who bet the spread. North Queensland were backed to beat Parramatta as if the score was already known, and while the final score of 50-12 wasn't a surprise, the winning team was as it was Parramatta! This week things are a lot quieter in early trading. We received an early bet of $8000 for the Bulldogs at -3 ½ against Manly on Saturday but apart from that, the Bulldogs have been very hard to lay. They are really light on for troops and it is only on reputation alone that they are wearing the favourites tag. The big clash for the week is up north where the North Queensland host Brisbane. The Broncos are premiership favourites at $4.75 and the Cowboys are third elects at $7. Origin spots are up for grabs and so are bragging rights. It is only fitting that they are equal favourites at $1.90. The Cowboys are going for ten in a row at home and of the bets taken so far 75% have been for North Queensland. RUGBY UNION The Waratahs showed that team 2005 doesn’t have the same mental frailties of the past nine seasons and gave the Reds a beating both on the score board and on the track. Our handicap shifted during the betting with solid support from overseas coming for the Reds. This was then followed by an avalanche of money for the Waratahs who are now assured of having at least one final match played at Aussie Stadium. The Blues hosted the Hurricanes in Tana Umaga’s 100th Super 12 match for Wellington. The Blues opened marginal favourites and were well supported early in the week. This forced us to push the price of the visitors. Some of our more shrewd clients found the $2.12 on offer good value for the Hurricanes and took it for enough that we ended up cheering the home side. Say no more. In this week’s final round the Crusaders host the Hurricanes in a match that is more than likely going to be replayed next week. The problem for the punter is that next week there’s a lot more at stake. The handicap of -12 ½ to the home side seems about fair and there has been nominal interest in the favourites. The Waratahs play an injury ravaged Blues outfit. With a bonus point victory guaranteeing them top spot and the Blues needing the same to stay in the hunt for a semi-final position, this game could be closer than form suggests. Punters are now warming to the Waratahs and three bets in excess of $10,000 have already got us shifting the handicap out to 9 ½ .If the money keeps coming the Waratahs will start even shorter than the $1.30 currently on offer. The Reds have shifted this home game from Ballymore to Suncorp Stadium. They’ll need all the supporters they can get when the Brumbies roll in on Saturday evening. The 4 ½ start to the home side is probably not enough, with clients launching into our opening quote of 3 ½ and $1.67. A $15,000 bet at the $1.67 on top of another $12,000 bet on the handicap at $1.90 will probably ensure that we will be cheering an unlikely victory for the Reds. GOLF The golfing gods have been kind to punters again this week as Vijay Singh won his third event for the season in a play-off against Sergio Garcia and Jim Furyk It is the third week in a row a player has been backed to win in excess of 150k and saluted. Tiger Woods was unlayable at $4.75 in his first event since winning the Masters and his lack of tournament play showed finishing in a tie for eleventh and with no round in the 60's. Phil Mickelson was the other player well supported and he fared better, finishing in a tie for seventh and closing with a six under 66 We head to Texas this week for the Byron Nelson Classic where defending champion Garcia must re-group after a disappointing final round last week. Woods heads the betting at $5 ahead of Singh, Els and Phil Mickelson. Retief Goosen playing in his first Byron Nelson is also in the mix. Singh and Els have already been backed to win in excess of 150k by our in-form golf punter at their opening quotes of $7 and $8 respectively while Goosen also has his admirers at his opening price of $15. The European tour saw Steve Webster end a ten year wait for his first title when he won the Telecom Italia Open by three shots over Bradley Dredge and a fast finishing Anders Hansen. Graeme McDowell was defending champion and best backed however he failed to produce last year’s form and missed the cut The tour heads to England for the Dunlop Masters and Northern Irishman Darren Clarke heads the field at $8 ahead of Lee Westwood at $17 with Colin Montgomerie and Thomas Bjorn at $19. Clarke has not won on the tour since the Northern Ireland Masters back in 2003 making the $8 quote appear a little short RACING The racing action moves to Adelaide this weekend for the Goodwood Handicap on Saturday and the Adelaide Cup on Monday. We expect to see a big surge in business on the Adelaide meeting with most of the now unable to watch Melbourne and Sydney racing live. As is the case with the sporting events that we cover, once 'live' coverage disappears, so does betting interest and racing in this country faces a bleak future unless there is some resolution to the current fiasco with racing vision. The Goodwood is, as always, wide open. We have Glamour Puss at $7 along with boom three year old Foreplay. The interesting runner is WA mare Ellicorsam ($11) who will be attempting to win first up. Another one with a 'boom' tag around its head is Sassbee ($13) a winner of five from seven. Of course you can never write off the evergreen Bomber Bill ($11) who won the Goodwood in 2003 and proved with a win last start that he is racing as well as ever. Far Lane is the favourite at $4.80 for the Adelaide Cup on Monday but there has been good early support for import Hug's Dancer ($11) and Warrnambool Cup winner True Courser at $21. Fine Distraction ($17) made up an enormous amount of ground at his last start in Adelaide and is more than capable of grabbing the major prize. FORMULA ONE Formula One leader Fernando Alonso failed to make it four wins in a row in Spain at the weekend but in keeping with the way the season has gone so far the favourite come race day, Kimi Raikonnen, went on to win by 27 seconds. Alonso was a $2.75 favourite heading into the event but punters went after Michael Schumacher who had won the previous four Spanish Grand Prix's. The larger bets for Schumacher included €3500 and $2800 at $3.50 but after qualifying he had drifted to $4.50. Raikonnen didn’t really draw any big bets until he occupied the pole, with the largest of those being $3000 at $2.10. MOTOR BIKES Valentino Rossi has drawn away to a 25 point lead over second placed Marco Melandri after just three races of the Moto GP season but that lead may be a bit flattering as Sete Gibernau has been in a winning position in two of those races before parting company with his bike. Gibernau is 37 points behind Rossi at the moment but he will be looking to close that gap this weekend at Le Mans in France. Gibernau has won this race the past two seasons and we are expecting him to be very hard to beat again, hence the price of $2.50. Rossi has attracted the normal amount of early shoppers including one bet of $2500 at $1.75. Troy Corser has lengthened his lead in the Superbike Championship after winning the first race in Italy on Sunday and then followed up by finishing third in the second race. Corser's recent wins has seen him gather a small cult following among Aussie punters and we took close to $10,000 worth of bets for him to win each race. ELECTIONS Normally we don't entertain betting on leadership battles as more often than not several parties know the answer before the public does. However, the big news in Australian politics for the past week or so has been the simmering tension between John Howard and Peter Costello in relation to the Liberal Party leadership. Based on that we have decided to open up a market on who will lead the party at the time the next Federal election is called. John Howard seems to show a reluctance to hand over the reigns to Peter Costello. Added to that is the release of polls this week showing Mr. Costello as the third choice as leader of Australia behind Mr. Howard and his Labor Party opposite Kim Beazley. John Howard has always said he will stay on in the job as long as the people and his party want him so he has to be the favourite to go into the next election. Mr. Howard is currently at $1.80 with Mr. Costello next in line at $2. In a major surprise we have taken more bets for the two “new kids on the block" Tony Abbott ($13) and Brendan Nelson ($11) than we have for the federal treasurer. Alexander Downer is theoretically still in the mix at $101 and just in case a budding young politician pops out of the woodwork over the next two years we are offering odds of $34 for anyone else. ENTERTAINMENT Big Brother is back and boy is it confusing! The series return has created massive interest around the country as there has been an 'imposter' added from the start but this also had a twist. The imposter, ‘Logan' has a twin brother who may well also end up living in the house permanently. The Logan combination has been backed for bundles to take out the major prize. I’m sure we haven't seen the last of major changes to the show but for the time being, the person called Logan, even though it is two people is the $3.25 favourite. If and when they get separate identities we will open up a new book with the two names. Glen, a Victorian farmer, is second choice at $4.50. The 'boy from the bush' has some amazing similarities to Marty who made it through to the final a couple of years ago. We have males occupying six of the top seven spots in the betting with Angela the only female who gets a look in at $13. Angela was backed to win close to $2500 when betting opened on Monday. My Restaurant Rules is getting to an interesting stage with only three left in the running. Brisbane had to close their doors at the weekend and the one time favourites couldn't see it coming as they had 350 people booked in for Mothers Day, 12 hours after they had to close down. There have been several twists to this series as well and although Sydney was up for nomination last week they are now $2.50 favourites. We are also covering the first series of the New Zealand version of Dancing with the Stars. In keeping with the way the Aussie series went, the first to go was glamour girl Nicki Watson. The new favourite is former All Black hooker, Norm Hewitt at $3, ahead of ex-Shortland Street actor Shane Cortese at $3.25. Until next week, good punting For
further information contact Gerard Daffy at Centrebet on 02 9206 8715 or
centrebet@centrebet.com
|
||
