A bit rich — bets plunge on winless Tigers
Geoff McClure | April 30, 2007
The Age
RICHMOND hadn't won a game and West Coast hadn't lost one but you wouldn't have known that had you seen the flow of bets come in for the Tigers in their round-five MCG clash on Saturday.
In what TAB Sportsbet said was the biggest plunge on a team still to register a win for the season, punters lapped up the big odds on offer for Richmond, outlaying more than $60,000 in a rush of bets that started on Friday and continued right up until the game began. Many of them were small and medium-sized bets but they included some big ones, too, among them two of $15,000, at $4.75 and $4.65, and another of $10,000 at $4.45. All of them got a good sighting for their money, of course, especially when the Tigers led by 21 points in the first quarter and also when they nearly hit the front again in the final term, but in the end it all amounted to nothing as the Eagles prevailed by 23 points.
But it wasn't just TAB Sportsbet that was taken aback by the plunge. Eagles punters couldn't believe it either. Because of the money wagered on the Tigers, it seemed that the more punters put on the Eagles (more than $200,000 in all), the better the price that was offered, last year's premier drifting from $1.16 to open at $1.22. Eagles punters weren't the only punters happy with attractive sporting odds after the weekend's sport.
Tigers of oldNO wonder Richmond fans are restless — the Tigers' loss to West Coast on Saturday means they have now lost their first five matches of the year for the first time in 25 seasons. At least, back in 1983, they then went on to win seven of their next 17 games to finish 10th.
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