Mid-summer crisis

By Ronan Groome

It is just about coming to that time of year again when everything becomes a little bit boring. New Premiership season aside, I have had enough of being stuck at home, enough of flat racing, enough of the life-less activities I have been occupying myself with. At this stage I can’t wait to get back to college, can’t wait for the jumps season to begin and can’t wait for a bit of order to come back into my life. All these feelings have probably come from my own depressing financial situation over the past few weeks, which was solidified at York last week. To say I had a bad week betting-wise would be a severe understatement. Abysmal would probably be a more accurate adjective. I don’t even want to talk about it, Yaa Wayl was my only winner all week out of loads of bets and it was just generally sad days. ‘Sad days’ as opposed to happy days, a phrase that has been stuck in my vocabulary from a good while ago. I think it best describes any negative situation.

I looked to the weekend’s football to get back some betting dignity. The likes of Paddy, Stan and William were probably still laughing at me from the past day’s antics so I had to do something. I got €12 on Bolton away to West Ham which just about covered all the other failed three o’clock bets. I then decided to unload the rest of my Betfair account on Chelsea getting an unquoted score at 3.9 away to Wigan. I think that’s the way from now on, when all else fails, get on Chelsea to smash a few in against sorry teams like Wigan and then just laugh evilly. So that left me rather okay for the day.

I spent the rest of my Saturday in Drogheda – yes, what has my life become? – out on the beer for my friend’s birthday, which actually was rather entertaining to say the least.

Sunday was just one of those blank days. One of those days that I will look back at when I am older and think what was I actually doing? The day was spent lounging around watching films, watching the Dubs throw their semi-final away which was particularly entertaining, and comfort eating every so often. I was gutted I didn’t get on Newcastle at 2/1 at home to Villa, it was a big price I thought but once again disorganisation, this time coming in the form of having no real idea what time it was before it was too late, prevented me from getting on what would have been a successful bet. Instead I backed Cork half-time/full-time at some silly price on Betfair, before reloading on the rebels at half-time to get my beans back.

At least next week may have scope for improvement. The return of La Liga can only be a positive, watching Barcelona and Real Madrid are what Saturday and Sunday nights are all about. Also X-factor is back on our screens, and say what you like about me liking X-factor, but I don’t care, it is a great show no matter how doomed the final winner actually is and since people have started betting on it, it has inevitably become all the more interesting. In racing, I suppose we will have to carry on with what we have and in saying that, the Celebration Mile at Sandown looks like a really interesting event with Premio Loco at the top of the market.

By Ronan Groome