As a punter I love chatting about sport and betting with like minded people. It is always encouraging when someone agrees with your logic and it gives you some confidence when taking your bet. Strangely though (and many punters will agree with this) it is somewhat unsettling when virtually everyone agrees with you.

This weekend is a case in point. The early betting on the Brumbies v Force match was Brumbies -4 and I did not expect it to last and helped myself to a healthy portion of it. Other punters on Goodforthegame agreed and the line duly moved to -6.

We were still patting ourselves on the back for “spotting the value” when word got out, more bookmakers were pricing up and some of these were coming out as low as -2.5 Brumbies. Most of us did the only thing a self respecting sports bettor would do, we pressed and increased what was already a significant exposure on the match.

As I write this the line sits anywhere between -3.5 and -6.5 and one thing is for sure is that this is shaping up as the first big rendezvous between bookies and punters in 2012. It is unusual to get betting sentiment so one sided and back to my earlier point history suggests this is not always a good thing. Bookmakers when they price up are very good at taking emotion out of the equation something which we as their clients strive to do but very rarely succeed in doing.

It got me thinking that perhaps we are reading too much into the arrival at the Brumbies of Jake White and maybe the Force are not the absolute no hopers certain people (me) have painted them out to be?

I also find myself looking hard at the Brumbies squad and getting nervous when I do not recognise a lot of the names. The squad has a youthful feel to it and while the Force only have a couple of stars there are a number of battle hardened journeyman in the mix.

The bottom line is that this match is shaping up as pivotal in terms of momentum going forward and if the Brumbies arrive the bookmakers will have a host of confident punters firing at them for the balance of the weekend. If they don’t do the business, well let’s not even go there!

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was first published on the 23rd of February 2012.

Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and to get on his free weekly e-mail list just send a message to brent@goodforthegame.co.za titled “Best Bets”.