The kids are on holiday but rather than relaxing with them on their opening day, Trish got up early and drove through to Booysen’s south of Johannesburg on Monday where she sat patiently as a tow bar was fitted to her car. This would enable us to take our bikes away with us this coming weekend and by shopping around she had managed to save us a significant sum of money. {readmorelink}Read more{/readmorelink}

Fast forward a few hours and I was rooted to the couch with my eyes fixed on the Varsity Cup final between Maties and UCT. I had got heavily involved from a betting perspective and as far as I was concerned this could just as well have been a World Cup final.

My position was such that any Maties win by 8 points or more would see large profits making their way into the Graham coffers with only a win by 7 or less, or a Maties defeat costing me money. I had through trading at various handicap levels put myself in a very strong position and with Maties leading by 11 points in the 2^nd half and dominating territory things looked good although I was getting annoyed at the way they turned down shots at goal, opting instead for lineouts which they then failed to score from.

As often happens when a team does not press home their statistical edge and convert it into points the opponent’s sense weakness and come back at them and UCT did exactly that scoring a late try to eventually go down by 3 points in what was a classic encounter.

Trish sensing that things had not gone well (my loud scream as the UCT reserve flanker crashed over may have given her a clue) asked me the inevitable “what was the damage” question and when I told her the figure she not so diplomatically pointed out that the loss was similar in amount to what she had saved on the car that morning.

Never one to miss a gap I replied “Oh well I guess the Graham family pulled square today” only to look up to find myself staring into a set of eyes that clearly did not see the humor in the situation.

After loads of apologizing I avoided yet more couch time but made a mental note to be a bit more sensitive going forward.

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was first published on the 1^st of April 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 brent@goodforthegame.co.za