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Centrebet Capers CRICKET Now we are in trouble. The unthinkable is on the verge of happening with England poised to regain the Ashes after falling over the line in the fourth Test. Australia need to win the last Test to retain the Ashes but a draw or an English win will see the Poms win them back. This has been a fabulous betting series and each match has broken the previous betting record. Before the fourth Test all three options were backed with the draw going in as favourite at 2.50. The biggest bets for the draw were $60,000 (3.00) and $USD 20,000 at 2.80 while Australia attracted a bet from India of $50,000 at 2.30 and another three bets of $20,000 at 2.40. Glenn McGrath's late withdrawal saw a late splurge on England led up by a massive bet of £12,000 at 3.50. Australia looked a hope of salvaging the match until another dubious decision, saw a late collapse. England had a small total to aim at but did lose seven wickets in the chase to once again prove how little there is between these two sides. It's off to The Oval for the last Test and with speculation around that the Aussie line up will we posted Australia at 2.55 and the first two bets were $5000 and $3200 but there has been money for both England and the draw. We have taken two bets of £1000 for England at 3.10 and one bet of $USD 20,000 for the draw at 2.75 from India. We can expect no favours from the curator for the last Test, and The Oval has been a batsman's paradise this season in England anyway so we suspect the draw will firm in the betting. AUSTRALIAN RULES The West Coast were the only favourites to go over at the weekend and for the second week in a row, a one point game went the way of favourite backers which cost us plenty. Geelong staggered over the line by one solitary point against Richmond which was good news to those who coupled up all six favourites to win in both codes on Sunday. One Victorian punter alone won $162,000 on multi payouts thanks to Geelong's win. The Eagles were a huge shortener in betting. We opened them at 1.65 thinking there would be money for the Crows as well but the Eagles started at 1.40 with a bet of $40,000 coming in at 1.45. It was a big loss for the Eagles as Adelaide have displaced them as favourites to win the flag. The four finals this week are very open due to injuries, suspensions and suspect form. The Eagles are at home to Sydney first up and will want to improve on what they did last week. They are 1.60 to win and while we have taken two $10,000 doubles for the Eagles into the Crows to win about 80% of the bets on the game have been for the Swans at 2.30. Geelong and Melbourne have limped into the finals and for that reason their match-up this week is the quietest of the four games. Geelong are slight favourites at 1.80 but are not a team that punters want to be on when they play at the MCG. St Kilda have become all the rage all of a sudden and the Saints have been backed from 4.50 into 3.80 to win the flag this week and also close to $60,000 in early trading on their match against Adelaide. The Kangaroos have had the wood on Port Adelaide in the past but it is Port who go into this game with the momentum and we think they look the goods. Currently, Port are slight favourites at 1.85, although we have taken tow $5000 bets for the Kangaroos at 1.95. RUGBY LEAGUE What an amazing NRL season it has been and as we come into the last round, every single one of our 'futures' markets are undecided. All games this week have some bearing on either the finals makeup or the wooden spoon and that has made pricing the games up a very arduous task. The first game up is Parramatta v Brisbane and if Parra win they are nearly assured of the minor premiership. Brisbane's injury toll is rising by the minute and coach Wayne Bennett said that if he could he would forfeit the game. Punters have assumed that that means the Broncos can’t win and in the first 24 hours of trading we took close to $25,000 for the Eels conceding 12,13 and 14 point-start. How Manly are still in the eight is amazing but their destiny is in their own hands this week. If they beat Canberra they make it, if they lose, they need the Roosters and Penrith to lose as well. Penrith have been on fire in recent weeks and the Wests Tigers only hiccup was a loss to Melbourne last week. Bets of $20,000 and $10,000 have been placed on the Tigers at -5½ against Penrith but if the money is right and Canberra beat Manly, then Penrith have a lot to play for. The four finals games will be open on Monday morning with the premiership betting available as soon as the last game is over on Sunday. RUGBY UNION New Zealand played their get-out-of-gaol card again against the Springboks. Last year in the corresponding game, Doug Howlett snatched victory in injury time and this year with four minutes on the clock, Keven Mealamu peeled off the back of a rolling maul to fall over almost untouched. Early betting last week supported the Springboks at both the handicap and outright. In one of our bigger holds of the year this trend was reversed as the Springboks were friendless on game day. New Zealand were heavily supported across the board resulting in a small result for the bookmaker after full-time on Saturday evening. Satuday night will see round two of the Bledisloe and the final match on the tri-nations series for '05. The Wallabies can deny New Zealand the tri-nations crown if they can claim victory in Auckland. Given the well documented injury debacle, the Wallabies recent run of poor form and the fact that Australia haven't won in Auckland since 1986 our odds assessors don't have a lot of confidence in the visitors. The market opened with New Zealand conceding 16 ½ point-start to the Wallabies and what is already a well supported outright price of 1.13. We expect some money for the All Blacks but a 16 point handicap is pretty big for an International Test match between the first and third ranked teams in the world. GOLF David Howell won his second event on the European tour, the BMW International in Germany, with a one shot victory over dual major winner John Daly and Australian, Brett Rumford. Howell was backed to win in excess of $100,000 at 21.00 again by an in-form punter from Sydney who also backed Luke Donald, K.J Choi and Paul Casey to win similar amounts. On the PGA tour Brad Faxon won his first event since 1999 when he captured his eighth title at the Buick Championship. A course record equalling nine under par 61 propelled Faxon into a play-off with virtual tour rookie Taaj van der Walt. Faxon was friendless in the betting while Zach Johnson, Lee Westwood and Kenny Perry who were all heavily supported failed to get into the event. What a pleasant surprise for us. This week the battle against an in-form betting public continues at the Deutsche Bank Championship. Tiger Woods is favourite and no surprise. However, with the withdrawal of Vijay Singh and in-form Mark Hensby and John Daly, his quote of 2.65 may appear cramp. On the European tour we head to Switzerland for the Omega European Masters with Sergio Garcia favourite at 6.00 ahead of Luke Donald at 7.00 and Miguel Angel Jimenez at 11.00. Throw in an inform Bradley Dredge at 15.00 and Henrik Stenson at 17.00 and we have a real tournament on our hands. FORMULA ONE This week’s Formula One Grand Prix will be held in Monza, Italy and despite Ferrari winning the last three races here (Barrichello twice, Schumacher once) they are not expected to be at the front this weekend. Kimi Raikkonen is the form driver at the moment, winning the last two races but he is still 24 points behind Championship leader Fernando Alonso. Raikkonen is 1.72 to win at Monza but unlike the last two races, he has been hard to sell early in the week. Alonso on the other hand has been backed to win close to $10,000 at 4.50 and also had a bet of €2000 placed on him to finish on the podium at 1.45. Juan Pablo Montoya has found some consistency this season and we expect him to be hard to beat. Montoya won here in 2001 and has been on the front row of the grid all four times he has raced here in F1. Montoya obviously has an affinity for the track and has been backed accordingly to win at 5.00. Just in case Michael Schumacher and Ferrari can find a little bit extra in qualifying, we have kept on the safe side of the German at 10.00. DANCING WITH THE STARS Ada Nicodemou is top pick at 3.50 to win the upcoming Dancing with the Stars series and the Channel 7 sweetheart has a few things in her favour. While we have said before that good looking females struggle on these shows, there is a pretty good form-line that says she will be hard to beat. The two winners in Australia so far were Channel 7 employees and the two winners so far in the UK have been BBC employees, which is the same channel that airs the series over there. Added to that, Ada is a popular young actress who has always polled well in the Logies and has some sort of a dancing background so it was an easy decision to make her favourite. The talented David Campbell is on the second line of betting at 4.00 has attracted the largest number of bets so far while evergreen actor Michael Caton is closing in. We have taken dozens of bets for Caton who has firmed from 15.00 into 8.00 and his popularity should see him go a long way in this competition irrespective of his dancing ability, along similar lines to John Wood. The love/hate relationship the Australian public has had with Ian Dickson in the past seems to be in 'love' mode at the moment as he has also been quite popular at 9.00. The series gets under way on Tuesday but already we have taken nearly $2000 in bets and that is without knowing whether any of the contestants can dance or not. IDOL England are on track to win the Ashes and another England, Dan, is our favourite to win Australian Idol. Dan was 17.00 last week but after an impressive performance this week, he has replaced Chris Luder as favourite at 5.00. Dan has a different look, a great voice and more importantly a terrific personality, all the ingredients to win. Punters agree at the moment as we have taken nearly $600 for him this week. Luder is second pick at 5.50 but interest has dried up in him after he was backed to take out nearly $11,000 last week. In New Zealand, Steve Broad is the new favourite at 4.00 ahead of Jesse O'Brien at 4.50. Nik Carlson, who has been fav for over a month has blown out to 6.50 following his second successive bottom three appearance. ELECTIONS There has been a lot happening on the political front in Australia this week and even though there are no elections on the horizon, the events have had an impact on betting. Firstly, New South Wales Opposition leader John Brogden fell on his sword after some unsavoury comments during a night on the drink. At that stage we had the Coalition favourites to win the next election at 1.65 after Bob Carr recently retired. Ironically it was again a link with Carr that saw Brogden forced into a situation where he had to resign as party leader and now the Labor Party are back into favourites at 1.60 with the Coalition at 2.20. The John Howard/ Peter Costello leadership 'battle' seems to have been ignited again and for Costello to issue a challenge, he must think he has the support needed. For that reason, we have cut his price from 2.40 into 2.10 to be the Coalition leader at the next election with John Howard drifting to 1.90. In New Zealand, National leader Don Brash has rallied to be a realistic chance of replacing Helen Clark as the Prime Minister. Brash this week released a tax package that was received well by the polls and has been reflected in the betting when we took close to $12,000 for him at different prices ranging between 3.25 and 2.55. Until next week, good punting For further information contact Gerard Daffy at Centrebet on 02 9206 8715 or centrebet@centrebet.com
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