Punters badly served by bookies
Sure, they keep in touch via regular emails and top, top bantz on Twitter, and the gifts were generous, at least at first; a money-back special here, enhanced odds there.
However, there appears to have been a small oversight in the communication from Paddy, William, Fred, Boyler and Co over the years. Somehow, amid all the betting tips and insider blogs and “information you will need to make your selections”, the lads forgot to remind us that many of the tennis players we might be interested in backing wouldn’t be trying at all.
A palpable error, as they might describe it, in the trade.
That’s what William Hill called it when they backed out of paying student Julius Ndlovu £1,000 last May for a 50p wager on Roger Federer to win a set 6-3 against Tomas Berdych. The odds should have been 20/1 not 2,000/1, insisted William, citing the “palpable error”.
“On any one tennis match, we can offer up to 150 prices which are constantly changing,” carried on William. “There can be small human errors.”
An unforced error, they’d call it, in the tennis trade. We are beginning to realise now that the 150 prices William and Co offer on any one tennis match have introduced some unforced errors of the deliberate variety into the mix.
Not to worry, William’s got this. “Betting firms are part of the solution to integrity issues, not part of the problem,” William Hill security director Bill South assured us this week.
After all, bookies are passing on extensive dossiers on the cheats to the game’s authorities. Every bookmaker has a list of between 10 and 20 dodgy top players, ex-Betfair man Scott Ferguson said.
Yet, somehow, even as tennis became the second-most lucrative betting market after football, they forgot to fill us — their valued customers — in on these concerns. What are the odds of that?
GAA solution that dare not speak its name
It will be hard earned, but there is a Nobel Prize waiting for whoever sanctions the solution that ensures we never again hear about GAA ‘structures’.
These days, when analysts and consultants and beancounters puzzle over declining newspaper sales, they doubtless skip over the small inconvenience that is the internet and concentrate on the bigger issue: That every second article is about GAA ‘structures’, and has been for at least 100 years.
It can’t be good for business, the sense you could step away from buying the paper for five years, or maybe 10 years, and pick up the story fairly handy on your return. A bit like Eastenders, only darker.
It doesn’t help that the articles which aren’t about ‘structures’ are, of course, about The Sacrifices and The Demands, the horrific hardships that befall unfortunate young men who pull the short straw and make the county. Grimmer than anything you’ll encounter in Albert Square.
Also, in recent times we have the bonus of genre-fusing investigations that attribute The Sacrifices and The Demands to the ‘structures’.
Yet, despite the articles, we have given up even mentioning the obvious, simple solution, so obvious it can never be considered. By making the county man ineligible to play club while on a county panel, you fix everything, and give everyone all the games and Champions League formats and rest periods they want.
One day, propelled into action by sheer tedium, they’ll bite this silver bullet, probably around the same time Ian Beale is killed off.
In doing so, they will solve everything from burnout to injury epidemics to reduced employment prospects to the inability to book holidays and every other problem that is down to the ‘structures’. Then, the reigning Uachtarán can choose a Nobel for Medicine, Economics, or Peace.
The thought life-cycle of ‘Ladyball’
‘Soft-touch for a woman’s grip, eazi-play for a woman’s ability.’ Oh, it’s a spoof. What a pity.
Still, they’re throwing the kitchen sink at the advertising budget. Must be breast cancer awareness or something. Fair play.
Oh look, the international media is playing along and feigning outrage. All credit.
Haven’t women basketball players been using a smaller and lighter ball for years? How demeaning for them.
Surely Lidl would have heard of the Eir ball, the entirely serious project back home in Germany which wants to introduce a lighter, smaller — and pinker, as it happens — ball into women’s soccer, to reduce head injuries and make the game faster. (See eirsoccer.com).
So outraged did I feel earlier in the week, I shall now channel that energy into attending a women’s sporting event.*
*maybe
GAA beat Judy to punch
Loath as I am to take issue with the magnificent Paul Rouse, two small quibbles about Thursday’s word that Judge Judy tends to outperform Sky Sports’ GAA coverage and Paul’s conclusion that this isn’t a positive state of affairs.
Firstly, I trust it wasn’t Paul’s intention to impugn, in any way, the tireless work Judy does dispensing justice on real cases for real people.
Nearly as important: The GAA have often debated reducing the number of matches on TV, to further oil the turnstiles. In the Sky deal, haven’t they actually reached an ingenious compromise? Fewer matches on most people’s TVs, while still coining it from the broadcasters.
Heroes & villains
Kevin McStay:
The Roscommon gaffer has boldly defied the GAA ban on the Five-Top Scale, beloved of everyone from Fergie to Jamie to Merse: “Everyone likes to beat Mayo, because they are a top, top team.”
John Delaney:
Continues to be hugely influential with the great and good of international football — now Mourinho is taking a position on the Portuguese presidential election.
European Tour:
“The thin end of the wedge,” one pro called it, the decision to allow shorts to be worn in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship pro-am. You start cutting golfers some slack and where will the horror end... jeans in the clubhouse?
Andre Agassi:
The most persuasive case yet that golf must resist shorts; the revelation he spent much of his career playing without underpants.
The New York Times:
Cutting down a life to fit a headline “Lou Michaels, Who Missed Kicks in the 1969 Super Bowl, Dies at 80.”
