Get friends in rugby towns

When you bet on sports there are many factors you consider. Current form and head-tohead statistics are important and – closer to the match – team news becomes critical.

Will the Proteas field an extra spinner, has the Crusaders star fullback recovered from the knock he took last week, will the Liverpool coach be resting key players in a FA Cup match ahead of bigger games to come?

Conditions are also important in most sports, but none more so than in rugby. At Goodforthegame we have a strong community of sports punters, many of them love the oval ball game and betting on it.

The information rugby punters crave – perhaps more than anything else – is an accurate weather forecast. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gone for a high scoring game on the back of a weather app that says it will be clear conditions, only to cross over to the ground to see sprinklings of rain on the camera lens.

Punters spend many hours searching for the best weather apps that can tell them anything from the likelihood of rain to humidity levels and wind speed. One thing that tops a good weather app is reliable information from close to the ground. In a Currie Cup match late last year a punter even phoned a restaurant close to the ground to find out what conditions were like in Kimberley.

Last Thursday night I had an excellent new guest on my Rugby Show previewing the weekend games. Mitch Evans was kind enough to get up at 5am in Brisbane to talk about Super Rugby AU and we all insisted he provided a weather forecast as he was going to the Reds match.

I had a quiet betting weekend, but on Sunday got reliable information that the conditions for the London Irish v Bears game would be good and went overs on points to save my weekend. As a rugby punter your objective must be to have a friend in every town with a major rugby stadium.