When you are betting on sports there are many factors that you take into account, Current form and head-to-head statistics are important and closer to the match itself, team news becomes critical. Will the Proteas field an extra spinner, has the Crusaders star fullback recovered from the knock he took last week, will the Liverpool coach be resting key players in a FA Cup match ahead of bigger games to come?

Conditions are also important in most sports, but none more so than in rugby. At Goodforthegame we have a strong community of sports punters, many of them love the oval ball game and betting on it. The information that all of these rugby punters crave, perhaps more than anything else, is an accurate weather forecast. I cannot tell you the number of times I have gone for a high scoring game on the back of a weather app that says it will be clear conditions, only to cross over to the ground to see sprinklings of rain on the camera lens. You just know you have done your loot in cold blood.

Punters spend many an hour searching for the best weather apps that can tell them anything from the likelihood of rain to humidity levels and wind speed. There is one thing that tops the good weather app though and that is reliable information from close to the ground. In a Currie Cup match late last year a fellow punter even phoned a local restaurant close to the ground to find out what conditions were like in Kimberley before kickoff.

Last week I had an excellent new guest on my Rugby Show on Thursday night previewing the weekend games. Mitch Evans was kind enough to get up at 5 am in Brisbane to talk about Super Rugby AU and of course we all insisted he provided a weather forecast before kickoff as he was going to the Reds match. Rain had been predicted, but he advised conditions were decent and so it proved with a high scoring first-half.

I had a quiet betting weekend, but on Sunday got reliable information that the conditions for the London Irish v Bears game would be good and went overs on points to save my weekend.

As a rugby punter your objective must be to have a friend in every town with a major Rugby Stadium.

Twitter: @BrentGraham.

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 25 February 2021.

Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and sends a free weekly e-mail list just CLICK HERE to register