The Friday Night Gamble

Not so long ago there was an ad on British television promoting an on-line gambling company. I can’t remember who it was for but it was tailored to a football audience and was smartly placed in the breaks surrounding a live football game. “I’ll bet on what I want, when I want, where I want”, said the leery Yorkshire voice-over.

Corners, throw ins, free kicks, the lot! This lad seemed determined to gamble on every event that could possibly take place in ninety minutes of football and nobody was going to stop him, right!

The aggressive tone of the ad was superb. It managed to insinuate that somewhere out there a vicious persecution of inane betting practices was being perpetrated and our hero wasn’t going to stand for it any longer. Ah, a true Spartacus.

Of course, if he really has followed up with anything like the kind of determination displayed in the ad, then our fearless voice-over friend is now probably living in a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere. But hey, at least he’s free.

My own betting habits are mild. I’m the kind of bloke who puts a fiver on a long shot in the Grand National and occasionally decides to stake two euro on a seven game accumulator. It takes a rare alignment of boredom and over confidence to lure me through the door of a bookies but last night was just such an occasion.

I was supposed to be at Bray Wanderers v Dundalk but the weather Gods put paid to that. With nothing else on I looked at the surviving fixtures, did some quick calculations and decided that I was highly likely to make myself a small fortune.

What set me thinking was the suggestion on a certain football website that Wexford Youths were going to beat Mervue United at Fahy’s Field. Nonsense, I thought. Wexford had two injuries, two suspensions and striker David Grincell was, at that very moment, having his appendix surgically removed. On top of all that a Wexford employee had asked me earlier in the day if I still had my boots. Things were bad.

Throwing caution to the wind I lobbed €2 on the boys from Mervue. The projected return was €2.34 plus my stake. Money in the bank. Next up was the Premier Division. With Shamrock Rovers at home to Galway and St Pats away to Drogheda the biggest issue seemed to be deciding in what denomination of notes I would like to be paid. I threw on Derry to beat a tiring Bohemians to make it a treble and flesh out the odds a little.

The odds fleshed out less than I would have liked and my €2 stood to earn me €2.78 plus my stake. The potential profits were beginning to stack up and I would soon be flashing the green like a pimped up Baltimore gangster in a hip hop video.

I decided to push the boat out a bit, just to make things interesting. Fortunately I am incredibly wealthy so another €2, banged down on Waterford to draw with Salthill, cost me less than a second thought. I had just stocked up on 29 cent cans of beans at Lidl so, come what may, I knew I wasn’t going to starve. Call it my insurance policy.

But I wasn’t done there. Shelbourne to beat Limerick at Jackman Park seemed to me to be a wise investment and I had a sneaking suspicion that Monaghan would have enough in the tank to beat Cork City at Gortakeegan. There’s something about the casual bravado of Roddy Collins that says ‘winner’ so I doubled up on those two and, after a quick phone call to my bank manager, another €2 left my account. This one carried a potential pay-back of over €10. Ay Carumba!

But I still didn’t have a marquee bet. You know the one I mean, the kind of bet that has the local bookie mopping his brow with a sodden handkerchief as he practices the speech to his kids where he explains that Santa won’t be coming this year.

Here it was; Shels to beat Limerick, Mervue to beat Wexford, Waterford to draw with Salthill and Monaghan to beat Cork. A four game accumulator that, for a €2 stake, would yield €197. Oh boy, Ol Gill’s gonna eat today!.

As I settled down to watch the games on the extratime matchtracker I was briefly interrupted by a neighbour who wondered if I wanted a baby duck. I’m not kidding. He had it with him, a little ball of yellow fur about the size of an apple. I thanked him, made my excuses, and closed the door on them both. There is no room for sentiment in the world of gambling.

At a quarter to eight the various kick-off icons flashed up and after 15 minutes of profuse sweating all the games were still scoreless. This was good news in terms of Waterford and Salthill but I felt that certain other teams were not taking their responsibilities seriously. One of the updates from Drogheda described the game against St Pats as “a good open game”. I didn’t want a good open game, I wanted Pete Mahon’s team to be battering at the Drogheda door like the big bad wolf at the little piggy’s straw house.

Soon enough things started to happen. Sean Brennan put Monaghan ahead, soon to be followed by goals for Shamrock Rovers and Derry City. But it wasn’t long before a familiar pattern established itself. For every event that went in my favour another one, somewhere else, went the other way.

News from the RSC, where I needed nothing at all to happen, was that Salthill forward Etanda Nkololo was “causing the Blues some problems.” Well, stop it, I thought. Stop it now! Then Dwayne Wilson put the ball in the Salthill net. I silently apologised to Etanda and urged him to redouble his efforts.

Shelbourne went one up at Limerick (which was good) but Vinny Sullivan equalised for Cork City at Monaghan (which was bad). Several results marched on to safety while others drifted away. Shamrock Rovers, St Pats, Derry, Shelbourne and Mervue all strode out into commanding leads. But so did Waterford. My faith in Salthill was proving to have been hopelessly naive. And all the while Monaghan and Cork remained resolutely tied.

One by one the final scores came in and my marquee bet was dead in the water. True, my Premier treble came through, and Mervue did beat Wexford, but these were small potatoes. Only a Monaghan winner in the late kick-off against Cork could serve up some kind of redemption.

I watched the clock tick down as Sean Brennan came close with a couple of efforts, knowing that it wasn’t going to happen. And it didn’t. The game at Gortakeegan ended in a draw. I did my sums and found that after an outlay of €10 I had managed to recoup €9.90. I was in the red to the tune of 10 cent. The bank manager wasn’t going to be happy and I did a quick stock take of the baked beans situation. I should be okay until next Thursday.

I took a deep breath, put the kettle on, and settled down to watch Robert de Niro in “The King of Comedy”. But something was niggling at the back of my mind, something about a duck. For some bizarre reason I was struck by the thought that I would quite like to own a duck.