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Written by Brent Graham
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 The 5-0 win over Guatemala on Monday night was very important to Bafana Bafana in that it got them amongst the goals albeit against very weak opposition. The team has struggled to find the back of the net in recent times and there is a lot of concern that we simply don’t have the firepower to progress to the last 16 of the World Cup. {readmorelink}Read more{/readmorelink}
While it would be wrong to read too much into the final score given the fact that their opponents had been hastily assembled and never had a household name in the side you can only beat what is put in front of you and Bafana can take heart from the showing.
Interestingly I find myself in a very similar position to our National side with only 1 week remaining until kickoff. My football punting in recent years has been poor especially when compared to the success I have had at rugby and frankly I was facing the prospect of 64 games in a month with some trepidation.
I have enjoyed success with my long term plays and have recently banked an 11/1 gamble on Notts County to win the 2nd Division and a 3/1 play that Portsmouth would be relegated but poor 90 minute form has seen me virtually lay off betting on individual matches. There is no way I am going to be content with a couple of bets on the Golden Boot and Tournament Winner in this showpiece though and getting involved in the games themselves is a given.
With this in mind I decided to begin my warm up on Monday night and I followed the advice of Chris Sturdy at www.goodforthegame.co.za and backed Bafana to win by more than 1 goal. Chris who incidentally will be previewing each and every World Cup match was spot on in his preview and I was very pleased to bank a few rand and more importantly perhaps give my confidence a timely boost.
With things looking up for both of us, Bafana and I will be eyeing Saturday’s match against Denmark for further improvement ahead of our respective tournaments but I think that’s where the comparison ends. While Bafana will consider a 2nd round exit as something of a success nothing less than overall victory at this World Cup will do for me!
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This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was first published on the 3rd of June 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
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