Brian Ashton must be wondering what positives he could take from the Southern Hemisphere maulings that his England side received in the last two weeks. One client found a positive from it all - Jonny Wilkinson’s kicking, as he bought England’s Kicking Metres for £7 at 85 (the total distance, in metres, of all successful England kicks). England’s greatest ever number 10 (cue the debate) kicked five penalties and one conversion all from a total of 199 metres, that’s an impressive average of 33 metres per kick, to bag the client a grand total of 798 of the Queen’s pounds.

Ok, so Authorized was an absolute shoo-in to win the Derby in the end but did you bring home the 1-2? One client did and left his account balance firmly in the black after buying both Authorized and Eagle Mountain on our Win Indices. Frankie’s ride was bought at 59 for £50 and the O’Brien trained Eagle Mountain was bought at 19 for £40 (Win: 99.1pts, 2nd: 49.5pts, because of the non-runner of course). We all know Authorized hacked up but Eagle Mountain did remarkably well to finish where he did and both horses combined to give the punter a profit of £3,225 – a great example of how spread betting can give you more value than fixed odds.

For the last couple of weeks the county scene has been enjoying the luxury of having some of their test players back in their colours. Not least Essex who were able to field Mr. In-form himself, Alistair Cook, for their 50 overs game versus Surrey last Sunday. One punter will wish that Cook had not taken part as he sold his runs at 40 for £15. The England opener showed his critics that he can hold his own in the one-day version of the game with a knock of 125 from 139 balls. This man-of-the-match innings compelled the client to part with £1,275.

If you haven’t followed one of golf’s Champion’s Tour events in a while then you must be having a ‘senior’ moment (get it?). Golf’s more ‘mature’ players line up week in week out amongst some very strong fields including the likes of O’Meara, Hoch, Kite, Roberts and Price. Speaking of golf’s most famous Zimbabwean, one client bought him in a Match Bet over Curtis Strange during last week’s Boeing Championship at 5 for £100 (10 pts for beating the other player and 3 pts per shot won by). The punter had to assume the crash position as Price shot a dreadful 80 and Strange a solid 71 which meant that the market made up -37 and he lost £4,200. The client would also not have been pleased to see Price shoot 63 the next day, only 17 shots better that his previous round!