The Perfect Punter by Dave Farrar

Author:Dave Farrar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 2012-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

That PSG against Lille game hit me hard, and left me with a dilemma. The two clubs were playing again the week after the Cup Final, and surely with the stays loosened they would produce a game worthy of the description. Having had some time to reflect, I felt it had been the pressure of the occasion which had got to both teams, particularly later on in the game, and even though Lille could win the League at the Parc Des Princes in the south west of Paris, they didn’t have to, as they would have several more chances in the coming weeks. I was tempted to treat the new game as a fresh gambling opportunity, and have exactly the same bet, over 2.5 goals, which had cost me in the Cup Final.

The problem was that I’d walked away from that Cup Final resolving never to have another bet on French football, echoing the views of two friends of mine, one Irish and the other Scottish, who are oddly obsessed with Ligue 1. They’d both been prescient enough to back Lille at 11-1 to win the title before the season began, but had probably pissed away any potential profit by betting every Saturday night, and getting things wrong more often than not. Each Monday they’d tell me: ‘That’s it, it’s a ridiculous league, it’s so unpredictable, I’m never going to bet on it again,’ and yet the following Saturday there they were, asking each other questions like: ‘Do you think the Lorient game will have goals in it?’ or ‘Marseille should beat Montpellier shouldn’t they?’ They start those Saturday evenings with hope of what might be, and more often than not end them wanting to kick in their computer screens. After the Stade de France, I knew how they felt, and would never again think that there must be a joke to be invented about the Irishman, the Scotsman and the bloody Frenchman.

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