Watching Ding and O’Sullivan doing battle at the Ally Pally on Sunday, I was worried about what I’d do with the prize if no centuries were scored. No sooner had I decided I’d pocket it, than Ronnie the Rocket whacked in a 125 break to win the match. The final missed black made Mr DT a happy man - because he correctly guessed a Ton-up make-up of 25 and gets the prize instead of me.
After the schedulers apparently tried to get even football’s two most boring men - Hansen and Shearer - yawning last week, there’s actually a Prem game or two worth watching this weekend. Tell us how many corners there will be in total in the Man City v Spurs and Arsenal v Man Utd matches. Email themole@sportingindex.com before 1.30pm on Sunday please. Correct answers could win a £200 Total Goals bet.
Not only does he have a name made for puns, but new BDO World Champion, Christian Kist has also proved to be rather handy with an arrow. The Dutchman gave the BDO a Kist of life by providing the division with an incredible underdog story. Tony O’Shea looked a little Kist off when Holland’s 13th best player beat him 7-5 in the final, but Sporting Index punters had been filling their boots well before then. Punters could buy Kist’s Tournament Index (max make-up 60) at 3.5 pre-tournament, or at 11 on the 9th January. The big guns waited until later in the tournament, though. After beating Alan Norris 5-1 in the quarter-finals, Kist’s Tournament Index rose to 27 and one chap bought for £400, risking a loss of £2800. The max return for the bet, a princely £13200, was realised instead.
Feed the Yak and he will score... unless he gets offered an early bath. Referee Anthony Taylor showed Yakabu the way to the tunnel after just 23 minutes when Blackburn hosted Fulham last Saturday, prompting one punter to go long on the visitors’ Win Index at 17.5 for £200. Who could argue with that? Let's face it, Blackburn haven’t even needed to go down to 10 men to be dealt a hiding this season. But this is precisely why we love football (our Bad Trade punter excluded)... Morten Gamst Pedersen scored just before half time to put Rovers 1-0 up and David Dunn scored just after to make it 2-0. That was apparently too many for a Fulham side that beat Arsenal only 12 days earlier, the 3-1 scoreline at full-time meant a market make-up of zero and a £3500 deficit for our client.
NFL Index
The Green Bay Packers had a near-perfect record in the regular season. The New York Giants struggled. Cue Eli Manning and an impressive 330 passing yards which led the Giants to a shock 37-20 victory over the Packers on Sunday night. Tom Coughlin’s team are peaking just at the right time just as they did on their 2007 wild-card run to a Super Bowl title, and are now available at 63-66 on our Super Bowl Index (up 24 points from last week). Can they go all the way?
Relegation Index
It’s been well documented that all is not well at Ewood Park this season. They have a manager the supporters don’t like and owners they don’t want. However, with seven points from their last four matches, Rovers have given themselves a fighting chance of becoming only the second side in Premier League history to be bottom at Christmas and still avoid the drop. A revised quote of 26-29 on our Relegation Index suggests there’s hope (they were 37-40 on Christmas Day) but can they pull off the Great Escape?
Description: It’s a couple of weeks old now, but still deserves to go in. This is Bob Hawke, 23rd Prime Minister of Australia, watching the cricket. You watching, Dave?
Extra: Kompany? Lightweight! Frimpong? Soft lad! Cattermole? Big girl! You’d have known about a tackle from Souness, Harris or Young.
*Mole
Competition Terms & Conditions: Unless otherwise stated,
the one winning Mole competition entry will be randomly picked from
all correct entries received by the stipulated deadline (or in the
case of no correct entries, the entries nearest to the correct answer).
