Weekly Articles "Road to Riches" by Rich 'Tighty' Prew
The Road to Riches Weekend of 18th-19th January
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, over the jumps at Ascot, Haydock and Taunton and on the all-weather at Lingfield and Wolverhampton
- Football, Premier League fixtures include Arsenal v Aston Villa
- NFL, The Play-Offs continue with the Divisional Round
- Rugby Union, the fourth round of Pool Matches in the European Rugby Champions Cup
- Golf, The Farmers Insurance Open on the USPGA and the Ras Al Khaimah Championship on the DP World Tour
- Tennis, the Australian Open continues
Free Tip
European Rugby Champions Cup Rugby Pool 3 Northampton v Munster 3.15pm Saturday
This weekend sees the last round of pool matches, with the knockout stages beginning with the last 16 after the Six Nations.
In the very tight Pool three after three games Northampton lead Munster and Saracens by a point, and Castres by two points.
The final games in the pool include this game and Saracens at home to Castres, a game in which the assumption would be Saracens gain a full five points. So both Northampton and Munster are going to need to win here to top the group and guarantee a home knockout round game.
Both Northampton and Munster have had inconsistent domestic league seasons, being in the bottom half of the Premiership and URC respectively. Both though have had good European campaigns so far.
Northampton have beaten Castres at home and won in South Africa against the bulls before losing 45-35 to Stade Francais last weekend, a result that nevertheless secured their path out of the group thanks to bonus points.
Munster beat Stade Francais at home, lost by two points in Castres then beat Saracens in Limerick last weekend 17-12.
Northampton were short of some first-choice players last weekend but at full strength are a young attacking and high scoring team with five England Six Nations Squad backs (Mitchell, F Smith, Dingwall, Sleightholme, freeman) and in 19-year old back row forward Henry Pollock a future star making his way in the first team for the first time this season.
Munster are a rather more prosaic outfit, nuggety and determined rather than a flair side. Peter O’Mahony could be back in time for this game and he and Tadhg Beirne of the Irish national side are formidable defensive opponents whilst Ireland’s 10 Jack Crowley is a very consistent goal-kicker.
The spread for this game has Northampton -8 points. Not so much looking at the bonus point for scoring four tries, Munster will have their eyes at least on the bonus point for losing by 7 points or less to progress, they need a single point to do so. Last Season they were knocked out by Northampton in the Round of 16 at Franklin’s Gardens with a final score of 24-14.
11 points Munster +8 points at 10/11 generally.
Ranking
England and Wales face a race to improve their world rankings next year or risk a treacherous pool draw at the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia.
World Rugby has finalised the dates for that tournament, which will be a week shorter than the 2023 edition in France despite having 24 teams, up from 20, and be contested initially in six groups of four, rather than four groups of five.
The draw for the World Cup will be held at the start of 2026 and this year’s Tests will be pivotal for determining the seedings. The draw for the 2023 World Cup was criticised for being conducted in 2020, based on the rankings from the 2019 World Cup. That meant Wales were considered a top-seed team, Ireland a second-tier team and Scotland were put in the third pot, despite the latter two improving greatly between 2021 and 2023.
In this cycle, the world rankings will be frozen after the 2025 November Tests. With an expanded World Cup the seeding bands will include six teams, not four. England, at present seventh in the world rankings, have 11 Tests penned in for next year the five Six Nations matches, a summer tour to Argentina (where they will play two Tests) and the United States (one Test), plus autumn games against New Zealand, Fiji and the Pumas.
If they fail to enter the top six in the world next year they could face back-to-back champions South Africa, New Zealand, France or Ireland in the pool stage. If Wales continue to plummet in 2025, and drop out of the world’s top 12, they will be protected from dropping into the third band of seeding as they qualified from the 2023 World Cup.
The 2027 World Cup will start on October 1, with the final on November 13. Those dates closely replicate Australia’s previous World Cup in 2003, which England won on November 22, so the tournament will end at the start of the summer in Sydney or Melbourne. It will also then largely avoid the NRL which has its grand final in early October.
There is a possibility Australia who as hosts will play in the opening match of the tournament will be guaranteed top seeding. That is to be determined; although previous hosts have not been given that protected status. That opens up the possibility that if they end 2025 ranked between seventh and 12th in the world (they are at present eighth), they would replace the sixth-best team as a top seed. So a side such as England or Scotland could finish the year sixth, but end up a second seed for the 2027 World Cup.
When the next World Cup is played it will include six pools of four teams each. That means there will be fewer preliminary matches with each team playing three teams, not four and more knockout fixtures. The top two sides from each pool will advance, along with four “best thirds”, to a last-16 stage. Therefore, only eight of the 24 teams will be eliminated. The tournament will then proceed as usual, with quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st September 2024. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £66,502 All bets have an ROI +2.75%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £70,650, a 1666% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 11th-12th January
Coming Up this weekend
- Horse Racing, over the jumps at Kempton, Warwick and Wetherby and on the all-weather at Newcastle and Wolverhampton
- Football, FA Cup third round weekend
- NFL, The start of the play-offs, Wild Card Weekend
- Rugby Union, the third round of Pool Matches in the European Rugby Champions Cup
- Golf, The American Express on the USPGA and the Dubai Desert Classic on the DP World Tour
- Tennis, the Australian Open in Melbourne
Free Tip
European Rugby Champions Cup Pools, Round 3
La Rochelle v Leinster Sunday 3.15pm
So far in this year’s European Cup in games played before Christmas both teams are played 2, won 2 in their pool.
Leinster beat Clermont at home 15-7 and won 35-12 at Bristol.
La Rochelle beat Bristol 35-7 and won 24-20 on a night of dreadful weather in Bath just before the Xmas break.
La Rochelle and Leinster have quite the recent history. In last year’s competition they were in the same pool, Leinster won at La Rochelle 16-9 and then beat them at home 40-13 in the Quarter-Final.
Before that La Rochelle beat Leinster 27-26 in the 2022-23 final and 24-21 in the 2021-22 final.
This season away from the ERCC Leinster are top of the URC with 9 wins out of 9 whilst La Rochelle are 6th in the French Top 14 with an 8-6 record.
Last weekend at home to Toulouse was indicative of some problems for Coach Ronan O’Gara. A full-strength side was close to being ambushed by an inexperienced Toulouse side that rested 20 players ahead of a ERCC trip to Durban this weekend to play the Sharks, only winning 22-19.
It seems increasingly like their double European champion squad now full of 30-somethings is maybe now just a bit over the hill and needs an overhaul.
Meanwhile a full-strength Leinster team consists of the vast majority of the Ireland national side plus Jordie Barrett + R G Snyman + Rabah Slimani with a combined 163 caps for the All Blacks, South Africa and France respectively.
I expect Leinster to win, the weather forecast is decent for the time of year which helps lower variance and the spread supremacy is reasonable.
11 points Leinster -5 at 10/11 generally
50 Up
In a little over 50 years of one-day internationals England have never enjoyed a period such as they had in the four years before the high point of the World Cup win of 2019. Since then, results in ODI cricket have slumped.
In the four years before the World Cup win over New Zealand at Lord’s, England played 93 ODIs winning 65, losing 26, with two games tied. In the five years since, they won 27 and lost 26. The win percentage has declined from 70% during 2015-19 to 50% since .
Winning 50% of matches, which is what England have been doing since 2019, is aligned with the long-term results: Since the first ODI in 1971, England have played 800 games and have won 401 of them. To understand why England are average again now, the focus should be on why they were so good between 2015-19.
The obvious starting point is with the captain for that period, Eoin Morgan, arguably the most outstanding of all leaders England have had in ODI cricket. As for personnel, Morgan was blessed with what has been called a “golden generation” of white-ball cricketers such as Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root, Jos Buttler, Adil Rashid, Ben Stokes and Morgan himself.
Much of the comment since has been around the difficulties of a regeneration with younger, less experienced players who are learning on the job about both international and 50-over cricket. The downgrading of the domestic 50-over competition, which now runs concurrently with the Hundred in August and has become, essentially, a developmental competition, means that the best young players play little 50-over cricket.
During a now too-crowded English summer there are now two lucrative T20 tournaments in the USA and the Caribbean competing for talent and they, plus the Hundred and the year round proliferation of T20 franchise cricket mean 50-over cricket is squeezed out apart from some bi-lateral series at the end of Test matches.
Jordan Cox, for example, one of the most recent call-ups to the England teams, has played just four 50 over games since his professional debut in 2019, while he has played 125 T20 matches in that period.
The final reason for the sustained success from 2015-19 was the committed focus on white-ball cricket in that period. Those in charge lost patience with underperformance, which culminated in a horrible World Cup in Australia in 2015 and were determined to change matters. One-day cricket had always been overlooked compared to Test cricket in England, and that was to be the case no longer. In selection, strategy and focus, white-ball cricket took precedence over Test cricket for the only time in England’s cricket history thus far.
Since 2019, the focus has shifted again to the detriment of the 50-over side. The Test team was the focus again under McCullum and three T20 World Cups followed quickly upon each other in 2021, 2022 and 2024, meaning the white-ball focus was squarely on T20.
There appears to be no appetite to move domestic 50-over cricket from August to the beginning of the season, where it should be (the IPL would still take the best English players, but many more would be available compared to August).
In positive developments Brendon McCullum will coach both the Test and White-Ball teams this year. Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, Will Jacks and Jamie Smith have shown there is plenty of talent in the English game. But a return to a 70% win record to emulate 2015-19 seems unlikely again. It was an exceptional period as an outlier not the norm.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st September 2024. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £66,502 All bets have an ROI +2.75%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £70,650, a 1666% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 4th-5th January
Happy New Year!
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, Over the jumps at Newcastle, Sandown and Wincanton and on the all-weather at Southwell and Wolverhampton
- Football, Premier League matches include Liverpool v Manchester United
- NFL, Week Eighteen and the end of the regular season
- Golf, the Sony Open in Hawaii on the USPGA and the Team Cup in Abu Dhabi on the DP World Tour
- Tennis, ATP Opens in Adelaide and the ASB Classic in Auckland
Free Tip
2024-25 FA Cup ahead of third round weekend
Each year in this column I look at the FA Cup ante-post market before the third round (takes place next weekend) and try to find some each-way value away from the head of the market. The closest I have got is Southampton at 50-1 reaching the semis in 2021. The quest continues!
Clearly the each-way component is the important factor here: Terms are half the odds 1,2. 17 of the last 20 FA Cup winners have been top six teams in that year, but more encouragingly 9 of 20 runners-up have come from outside the top six. This is what we are looking to find.
The prevailing thought of a decade ago was “the top teams will rotate, this gives a chance to the rest” but in recent years that has adjusted as all 20 Premier League sides have rotated for the Cup but at the margin, after all there are only three trophies a year to win and the League is out of reach to 17 clubs a season, teams that are not chasing Europe or not at risk of relegation have less incentive to rotate in key spots as the competition develops. I expect we will still be baffled by some team selections in later rounds though!
Another factor to consider is the absence of FA Cup replays which has extended from this season onwards from the fifth round onwards to the first round onwards. I wonder if this increases the likelihood of some upsets. Lower division teams might get a shot over a a single game/plus penalties that they’d be unlikely to get over two games where a top side would have too much for them, especially if the replay was at the home ground of the bigger club.
There is a major variance factor here, the draw. All we can do is look at an on paper favourable third round tie and hope for the best in subsequent rounds. This is why I am looking for 33-1+ teams rather than, for example, Newcastle (Bromley home this year in the third round) or Tottenham (Tamworth away) at 10/1,12/1,14-1 prices
So who is on my short-list? In no particular order:
Nottingham Forest (Luton at home) 50-1 in a spot, 40/1 widely available. Only conceded 19 Premier League goals all season, third best in the league. In the midst of an excellent season, just look tremendous value here. Might help if their league form worsens a little and they don’t stay top three until the business end of the Cup!
Fulham (Watford at home) are 8th in the Premier League, 40/1 available
Brentford (Plymouth at home) are 12th, 33/1 available
Brighton (22-1) away at Norwich, Aston Villa (22-1) at home to West Ham and Bournemouth (33-1) at home to West Brom were others considered, discarded because of slightly tougher draws or lesser value or both.
In the end I decided on Forest and Fulham, two bites at the cherry.
10 points each way Nottingham Forest to win the FA Cup 50/1 Bet365, 40/1 SkyBert, 33/1 widely available (1/2 1,2)
10 points each way Fulham to win the FA Cup 40/1 widely available (1/2 1,2)
Shoe-horned
In its team and squad selections, the England cricket team is putting less and less opinion on performances in Couty cricket and more on physical attributes from very young players. If the County game was still of pre-eminent importance the likes of Liam Dawson, who averaged nearly 60 with the bat and 25 with the ball in this year's Championship, would be playing for England, and so would the Essex fast bowler Sam Cook, an accurate fast-medium wicket-taker.
County cricket isn't being given a chance to adequately prepare players for international cricket. The England ODI side has lost 13 of its 20 most recent ODIs and has won just one of its eight most recent bilateral series against sides excluding Ireland and Bangladesh. Players coming into that ODI have hardly played any 50-over cricket. Jordan Cox, for example, has never played in a county 50-over match.
Consider Phil Salt's comments after England's ODI series loss to West Indies. Salt acknowledged his side's lack of experience in the format and came up with the memorable phrase: "I'd love something like a domestic 50-over competition."
There is one of course, but it is scheduled concurrently with the Hundred, in which all the England players play. England is therefore in the situation where our players are at a disadvantage in a format in which a World Cup is still scheduled to be played for years to come.
Selectors are picking players on attributes rather than experience. So Josh Hull was picked due to his height and left-arm delivery and Shoaib Bashir was picked on the basis of a clip on social media. Rehan Ahmed, John Turner and most recently in New Zealand Jacob Bethell are similar. All five are teenagers, and some may go on to be successful England players but none have much county experience.
To some extent you cannot blame the England team management. They were not responsible for the degradation of the 50-over domestic competition. They are not responsible for the scheduling of the Championship programme which promotes skills such as medium-paced bowling with a Dukes ball- which has little place on most Test tours. The county game is no longer fit for purpose.
We need to create a scenario where our domestic competitions more adequately prepare players for international cricket. This means more Championship games in high summer, more support for counties which prepare pitches to help spin bowlers and a 50-over competition which involves the best players. No administrator is currently taking the tough decisions necessary to allow it to fulfil its purpose. Championship cricket is played in April and September. The 50-over tournament is now a 2nd XI competition, Blast finals day is 7 weeks after the group stages and in large part because a fourth tournament has been shoe-horned into a schedule that cannot expand because of the calendar/months available.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st September 2024. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £66,502 All bets have an ROI +2.75%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £70,650, a 1666% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 21st-22nd December
Please note, the column will return for the weekend of 4-5th January. Happy Christmas and New Year to all our readers.
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, Over the jumps at Ascot, Haydock and Hereford and on the all-weather at Newcastle and Wolverhampton.
- Football, Premier League matches include Aston Villa v Manchester City and Tottenham v Liverpool
- NFL, Week Sixteen
- Cricket, the fourth test between Australia and India in Melbourne from Boxing Day.
Free Tip
Gallagher premiership Rugby Leicester v Bristol Saturday 3.05pm
After the first two rounds of the European Champions Cup, the teams return to domestic action for the rest of the month and this game sees 3rd placed Leicester host 2nd placed Bristol, both with 5 wins and 2 losses in 7 games, the Bears ahead on more bonus points scored.
No Premiership defence has stopped Bristol, who attack from anywhere, this season.
These are the points scored by game, first to latest game
24,41,36,40, 35,31,48
That’s 255 points at 36ppg
However the recent experience in the ERCC was very different. Both Leinster in Round 1 and La Rochelle in Round 2, European Super-powers with squads above anything they’ll see domestically restricted them to 12 and 7 points respectively and beat them comfortably. Bristol still attempted to attack from everywhere but on each occasion were in trouble up front and therefore lacking a stable platform to play from.
Leicester meanwhile still have their traditional strengths in defence and the tight forwards. Indeed in Michael Cheika’s first seven games as Head coach Leicester have the tightest defense in the Premiership allowing just 21ppg.
Leicester have had a very different European experience so far this season, scoring 28 points and a losing bonus point in Bordeaux and then thrashing an under-strength Sharks side last weekend when they themselves were back at full strength after the Autumn Internationals.
However can they be the first Premiership side to restrict Bristol this season? I think it’s unlikely that Bristol will be kept below 25 points (light rain is expected, so worth keeping an eye on the forecast, but nothing too troubling at this stage) and with the spread currently Leicester -7.5 points Leicester would need to be above 32 points to cover.
However Leicester have only scored 184 points this season, or 26ppg, the lowest actual and average scoring of the top five teams. 32 points plus seems optimistic.
11 points Bristol +7.5 points at 10/11 generally available.
Socialism in sport!
In watching the most prominent matchup of the 2024 NFL season a few weeks ago it occurred to me that this kind of A-list battle could not happen in most other US professional sports leagues, especially baseball. Usually, market size matters but not in the NFL.
The Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, who played in the matchup of the year that delivered the Chiefs’ first loss in front of 32m US viewers a few weeks ago represent two of the smallest markets in all of US professional sport, let alone the NFL. Plus this year in the NFL, the two New York teams are abysmal, yet the league has not suffered. The Packers, playing in a market of just 100,000 people, continue to thrive.
There are several reasons for this, but the two primary pillars are equal sharing of national revenue, primarily media revenue, and a restrictive salary cap. These fundamental tenets of competitive balance level the financial playing field in a way that has been instrumental to the NFL’s unrivaled prosperity and popularity.
Yes, other leagues have salary caps and revenue sharing, but no other league has both pillars to the extent of the NFL. And this “socialistic” business model is clearly working.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st September 2024. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £66,502 All bets have an ROI +2.75%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £70,650, a 1666% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 14th-15th December
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, Over the jumps at Cheltenham, Doncaster and Newcastle and on the all-weather at Southwell and Wolverhampton.
- Football, Premier League matches include Manchester City v Manchester United
- Rugby Union, the Investec Champions Cup continues
- NFL, Week Fifteen
- Cricket, the third Test between Australia and India in Brisbane and the start of the 24-25 Big Bash League.
- Golf, the Mauritius Open on the DP World Tour
Free Tip
Champions cup Rugby round 2 Pool 1 Leicester v Sharks 5.30pm Saturday
The Durban-based Sharks qualified for the tournament through their Challenge Cup win last year, the first time a South African side had won a European title, and began Pool 1 last week with a 39-21 home win against Exeter, scoring some thrilling tries, including four in a twenty minute spell, in great conditions. Discipline was a problem Discipline with three yellow cards and 19 penalties conceded.
At full strength this is a formidable team, particularly up front where a fierce pack can include Springbok World Cup winners Nche, Mbonambi, Nyakane, Etzebeth and Kolisi. Meanwhile Esterhuizen, Mapimpi and Hendrikse are in an exciting back-line.
So why are they up as 10.5-point underdogs to a Gallagher Premiership team? The issue is the short turn-around between games, the amount of travel involved and team rotation. Essentially South African teams three years into their Champions Cup inclusion have to pick and choose which games to go all out in, and which to try and get by in because of the logistics involved. They aren’t given blocks of games at home then blocks away which might help. They have a growing injury list too with Ebzebeth, Kock, Am, Venter and Tshituka all out. In facgt no less than 15 players including 12 starters from last weekend are listed as out because of "Injury and Recovery"
The issue can be seen in the performance season to date in the URC where they have played 18 games, the vast majority without their current Springboks playing first in the Rugby Championship and then on the Autumn Northern Hemisphere tour and have won just 4 games.
Leicester rested most of their current internationals in Bordeaux last weekend, a game immediately after the Autumn Internationals. They led at half time and ended with a four-try bonus point in a 42-28 loss. The big guns are all back here: Montoya, Martin, Cole, Reffell and Pollard included. Under new Australian coach Michael Cheika they’ve had an encouraging start to the season, 3rd in the Premiership with 5 wins from 7 games and in the midst of an expansion of their game plans to bolt on more creative flair onto their traditionally strong forwards and kicking game. It doesn’t get much easier from here for Leicester with Ulster and Toulouse coming up in the Pool after this game.
11 points Leicester -10 points at 10/11 generally
A thorny problem
After their 3-0 drubbing at home to New Zealand, Indian cricket fans needed some good news.
As India prepared for a resumption of eagerly-awaited hostilities in Australia, the series is 1-1 headed into this week’s third test, it should not be overlooked that their board are still in dispute with Pakistan over plans for the Champions Trophy in February. The BCCI have told the ICC that the Indian team won’t play any Champions Trophy matches in Pakistan.
The options are these:
1. India forfeit their place in the tournament
2. The matches involving India are shifted to UAE.
3. The tournament is shifted to UAE (or elsewhere.)
There are precedents. In last year’s Asia Cup hosted in Pakistan and Sri Lanka for example, India played all their matches (including the final) in Sri Lanka. But that was in the original schedule (arranged between the Asia Cup nations.) The problem with this 2025 Champions Trophy is it’s an ICC event and the semis and final are all rightly scheduled in Pakistan where they have rebuilt stadiums for this exact purpose. If India refuse to play any matches in Pakistan, it means there will need to be two alternative venues for semis and final in the event that India qualify for them.
In the end it’s all about money. Disney-Star recently paid an estimated $3billion for the rights to show (in India) all ICC tournaments from 2024-2027. That consists mainly of two men’s T20 World Cups (2024 and 2026), next year’s Champions Trophy and the 2027 ODI World Cup. So one can assume each tournament is worth say $500-$800m from Star to the ICC. If India don’t play, presumably that ICC revenue will be forfeited too. As that money is shared around the global game, everyone loses.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 1st September 2024. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £66,502 All bets have an ROI +2.75%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £70,650, a 1666% increase.
