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 With just over a week to go until the start of the 2011 IRB World Cup, local bookmakers are falling over themselves in an effort to give punters as much variety as possible.
There is of course the traditional “Tournament Winner” market in which home team New Zealand continue to trade deep in the red at a top price of 7/10. Australia is clear 2nd favourites at 4/1 with the Boks on offer at 7/1 for those who reckon they can go back to back. 2003 Champions England are 16/1 shots and you can get 20/1 on my dark horse France.
There are also markets on the 4 groups such as who will win the group and who will qualify and as mentioned in my “Springbok Insurance” article a few weeks back you can get odds on which stage of the tournament any of the major teams will exit.
There are also exotic markets many of which will hold your interest for the duration of the event. You can for example bet on whether there will be more or less than 309.5 tries over the 48 matches and the tournament drop goal line has been set at the 18-20 level depending on where you shop while if you fancy loads of infringements and perhaps some fisticuffs then backing over 44.5 yellow cards at 11/10 could be the bet for you.
The top tournament try scorer is always an exciting market and traditionally you would not be far wrong backing a New Zealand winger so no surprise to see Jane and Guildford at the top of the boards trading at 6/1 with the likes of Habana quoted in double figures.
For those interested in betting on the matches themselves you will be able to get bets on whether games will have lots of points and tries or will be tight and there will be odds on everything from what the first stop in play will be to which team will score the final points. Many bookmakers have already priced up on the handicaps for the group matches and the All Blacks are set to give Tonga a massive 69.5 point start in the opener and the Boks are 12.5 point favourites over Wales.
Simply put there is something for everyone and over the next few days my advice is that you top up your accounts and get ready to dish out some bookmaker pain!
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was first published on the 1st of September 2011.
Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and presents a sports betting radio show every Thursday night from 22h00 – 22h30 on 1485AM Radio Today or Channel 169 of the DSTV Audio Bouquet and to get on his free weekly e-mail list just send a message to brent@goodforthegame.co.za titled “Best Bets”.
You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/brentgraham or get on his mailing list by dropping him a line at brent@goodforthegame.co.za
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