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 There are certain areas where my wife Trish and I are very different. She does not enjoy rugby and aside from being kept up to date on my bottom line has no interest in betting.
One trait we share though is the ability to sniff out a bargain and while I do it by searching through a host of online Sportsbooks for the best deal, she will scour the newspapers and shopping centres for specials.
A few weeks ago she phoned me sounding very excited. Mango was launching their flights to Cape Town from Lanseria and return tickets were dirt cheap. Before I knew what was happening the kids had been excused from school for a couple of days and we were heading south for a bit of relaxation and a catch up with family and friends.
Of course my objective was to try and cover as much of the costs as I could by winning money on the rugby but after Friday night I found myself down after losing on the Bulls v Waratahs match.
When you drop money early on a weekend it always puts you under a bit more pressure but little did I know that the cost of the weekend was about to jump significantly. I was engrossed in the first half of the Lions game when Trish called me. She had checked our departure times for the next day when she noticed the letters “Tue” where she expected to see “Sun”. On closer inspection it turns out she had booked us to fly back on the 5th of July instead of the 5th of June and our mood went from relaxed to panic in an instant.
We had to get back the following day but an online search of flights available threw up some seriously expensive options. We eventually got on a one way Mango flight at nearly double the cost of our original tickets and returning to the rugby the pressure on each punt I placed had now seriously been ramped up.
Fortunately I made a few rand on the Lions game and eventually covered 50% of the additional ticket cost despite a loss in the final game where the Cheetahs let me down.
Thirty minutes of chaos aside we had a great holiday in the Cape. Trish thanks for everything but next time perhaps I’ll book the tickets?
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was first published on the 9th of June 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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