Sunday nights back home usually mean one thing; smash mouth NFL action. I love it! The competitive nature of the game, the violence, the brutality; it ticks all the right boxes for this underground mammal and I can't wait until September for it all to kick-off again. So imagine my surprise on Sunday night when I turned on the TV to find an early preview to the upcoming season. I was told that this World Cup Final would be a classy affair, pitting the Dutch's total football mentality against Spain's tika taka approach (which if you ask The Mole means football bordering on death by boredom). No one had this down as a violent affair. All except one client who probably saw that Howard Webb was in charge and thought that an Englishman on a World Cup stage was bound to make a mess of things. In fairness to the copper from Rotherham, the men in Orange didn't give him much help. A buy of Bookings at 48 (10pts per booking, 25 for a red) for £100 was looking pretty handy after just half an hour. Having watched RVP, Puyol, Van Bommel (shocking I know) and Ramos booked, Nigel De Jong decided to get in on the act with a kung fu kick reminiscent of this handy effort. Already in profit at half-time, with the market so far at 50, the remainder of the game saw the Dutch continue to kick the living daylights of their card waving opponents. Amazingly only four more players saw yellow in the rest of normal time meaning the market made up 90 which spelt a profit of £4,200 for our guy.

From Soccer City to Bristol now, and scenes of jubilation for Bangladeshi cricket, and despair for one of our clients. The tourists last won a match 250 days ago and after a bit of a mauling in the first game of their three match series with England, they came in as heavy underdogs for the contest. Our client bought England Supremacy over the Bangels at 59 for £30 - after having seen the tourists put up a target of 237 for Strauss and Co. to chase - meaning he needed England to win by six wickets or more to be able to afford to take the missus out on Saturday night. As early as fifteen overs in to the chase our man was in trouble. Strauss and 'Saffa' Kieswetter were both dismissed too early, leaving the hosts on 77/2. A measly £62 profit was all our man was on for at this stage and things were about to get even worse. Eleven overs later and England were five wickets down and treading deep water. 'Saffa' number 2 (does England produce any of their players anymore?) Trott was attempting to lead some sort of revival, but with the men around him putting up about as much defense as Pompey did last season, this was a losing battle. A crippled Ian Bell came out to try and save England's blushes but when Trott edged to Islam (the cricketer not the religion) the game was up. A make-up of -5 and a loss of £1,920 meant our man probably stayed in to watch the game on Sunday night.

"Did he get downward pressure? Did he ever!" Bottom of the table Catalans pulled off the shock of the week by beating St Helens 30-20. It's been a very lean season for the Dragons who were 2-4 pre-season on our Bottom 3 Index but have been as high as 43-45 this season. Outgoing coach Kevin Walters believes their poor form has been due to an injury crisis at the club and is confident that with players coming back they can pull themselves out of the basement. Hmm, I'm not so sure. They're now 33-35.

At the other end of the table champions Leeds have announced that assistant coaches Francis Cummins and Willie Poching will leave the club at the end of the season. Leeds were our pre-season favourites on our Outright Index at 41-44 but suffered a big blow to their hopes of retaining the crown with a 25-6 defeat to Hull KR. The Rhinos' eighth defeat of the season saw their price drop to 23-24.5. Like the Dragons their on-going fortunes might well be decided by how quickly key players can return from injury.


YouTube Based Banter

Iker Casillas shows us what life is all about. When you've won the World Cup who wouldn't make out with their hot as hell girl on national TV?