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Thursday, May 11, 2006

Are Hereford worth a bet?

The following article comes from Bettingzone by Gary Boswell. Make of this what you wish:

Lovers of arbitrage looked to have been thwarted when Hereford stole a contentious point at Christie Park on Sunday.

Our carefully laid home double on the outright outsiders to set up a second leg arbitrage looked foiled but by virtue of the second legs being staggered over two days and the Grays-Halifax result going our way, the chance is back on.

Skybet have reformed their outright market without Grays and predictably have Halifax as the new odds on favourites.

This leaves Hereford at 11/8 and can be coupled with the two 4/1s we've already taken on Halifax and Morecambe to create a simple overround.

Eight points on Hereford now on the outright market will bring you eleven points profit to cover the seven you've already staked with plus four whilst the eight will leave 2.5 points profit on either of those already backed.

Whether you choose to go down this route depends on how lucky you think Hereford were on Sunday and how confident you feel about them getting past the Shrimps at Edgar Street on Thursday.

Sammy McIlroy was fairly adamant that Graham Turner had had another of his half-time chats with the referee on Sunday hence the seemingly scandalous bias toward the Bulls in the second half.

You can't argue with a penalty that is given for a defensive header and a perfectly good Michael Twiss goal disallowed and there does seem some credence in the Hereford were lucky theory.

That said, they played the better football for half an hour in the second half and arguably were not too far off deserving the point that they got.

They now take the best Conference defensive record into a second leg in which they have the home advantage. Couple this with Morecambe's poor away record this season and you can see why the Shrimps are pushed out to 13/2 on some outrights.

My reasoning from last week still stands though. I don't consider Hereford a shoo-in tonight and I'm fairly reluctant to hedge all of my projected 10.5 points profit on a Morecambe-Halifax play-off final at the Walker Stadium on May 20th.

The Bulls have wobbled in play-offs before as a red hot match betting favourite and they did nothing on Sunday to suggest they are streets ahead of Morecambe.

I expect tonight's Live on Sky game to be another close affair which the Bulls might just shade and I personally will be hedging just enough of my 10.5 points to make the Bulls a break even on the outright leaving still over five points profit guaranteed on the Morecambe & Halifax bets.