I was quite excited for this past weekend’s Currie Cup final as my form had improved over the preceding weeks and in sports betting confidence is always important.

I made the Sharks a decent value play to lift the trophy at 2/1 but my main bet was the Sharks to score 17 points or more and that we would get less than 5 tries in the match.

The best thing that happened in this game in the first 25 minutes was the lightning break as it was an absolute appalling watch up until that point. It was good news for my unders tries bet, but not for my Sharks points bet as Curwin Bosch was uncharacteristically missing penalties. The game improved after the teams returned to the field and when Nkosi went in for an excellent try just before half-time my Sharks points bet was looking solid and I had already mentally banked my under 4.5 tries strike.

Bosch didn’t have the best of games with the boot, but he did nail a couple of monsters and my overs Sharks points bet arrived with some time to spare. Now I just needed the Sharks to win the game as the cherry on top and with them leading by 3 points going into the final 10 minutes I was shocked to see them turning down kickable penalties choosing instead to go to the corner. This went against everything they had done in the match to date and to make it worse they then attempted drop goals which given they had chosen not to take the penalties defied all logic.

The Bulls, to their credit, hung in there with some gritty defense and eventually got the ball into the Sharks half where they were able to kick a penalty to level matters. Had the Sharks just kicked the 3 points they could have led by 6 points, forcing the Bulls to score a converted try which would have been no easy task against a strong Sharks defense. The Bulls won the game and while the majority of my bets landed and I showed a healthy profit I was pretty annoyed at the Sharks tactics.

Local rugby now takes a break, but it is perfect timing as we have Six Nations starting this weekend and I can’t wait to get involved so look out for our previews on the Goodforthegame website.

Twitter: @BrentGraham.

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 4 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