This past weekend threw up another classic example of how sports betting can make watching an event so much more exciting even if the final outcome is not always as you would have liked.

The Leopards were hosting Western Province on Friday night and Betxchange the first bookmaker to price up made the visitors -22. WP had to win the game by 23 points or more should you back them on the handicap.

The general feeling of punters was summed up in the Goodforthegame forum by Logan who confidently predicted that the handicap would not last and the WP backers should move quickly.

When the lads sniff value they are like a set of Twilight vampires smelling human blood and they moved in and swiftly hovered up the -22 on offer.

I was a little slow to react and only managed to get on at -25 but I was still confident that this WP team could do the business as the Lions had beaten the Leopards away by 30 points and the previous week Province had given those same Lions a hiding of note.

Things looked good early on and coming into the last 5 minutes WP were on attack and 29 points ahead. They had a scrum on the Leopards line and with the 8^th man appearing to be in control of the ball at the base the ref called “ball is out” and a Leopard jumped in to snatch it thus clearing the danger.

Handicap punters were still relaxed though as there was only 1 team in this and the visitors continued to attack only for the Leopards to intercept to score under the posts with less than 2 minutes remaining. The gap was 24 with the conversion to come and I had done my money and bookmakers must have been chuckling as the Leopards player looked to pop the conversion over from right underneath.

Somehow he missed and with seconds remaining the -22 backers had dodged a bullet of note. WP kicked off no doubt with thoughts already on the post match beer only for a Leopards sub to run through half the side to set up an injury time try for the home team.

Punters around the country were left crying into their prematurely popped champagne while bookmakers partied until the early hours of Saturday morning. A loss it may have been, but wow what a ride!

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This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was first published on the 29th of July 2010.

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.

You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/brentgraham or get on his mailing list by dropping him a line at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it