THE Masters?
Too late to start looking for any value and besides at 24 hours remove I'm not even sure if they'll have made the cut. London Marathon? Bernie Clifton's ostrich is showing signs of age and won't have the legs for the distance. The Moto GP Grand Prix of Americas?
Yeah, let's just think about that for a minute . . . right, moving on. I know, what about the Scottish Cup semi-finals? Sounds like a plan, not least because it's taken me all of 30 seconds to work out exactly where the tenner's going this week. Anyone who witnessed Rangers' defeat in the Ramsdens Cup final last weekend will be wondering how it is exactly that Dundee United, their opponents today, are trading at even money. At one point at Easter Road last Sunday, Raith Rovers were 9/1 in-play.
They subsequently started extra-time at 6/1 and touched 13/2 at one point, all of which left this columnist pondering whether anyone from bet365 was actually watching the game or if the representative was too busy looking out for shady-looking Asians speaking furtively into mobile phones. It was apparent from early on that only one team seemed up for it.
Of course, the evens quoted about United is based on a 90-minute scoreline but that does little to put me off. Jackie McNamara's side have faced top-flight opposition in every round of the competition and have managed to see them off in regulation time. They comfortably beat Rangers in last season's fifth round and are a technically more accomplished outfit than they were last February. One of the goalscorers that day, Jon Daly, is now of course a Rangers player but the Irishman is a shadow of the striker who bullied top-flight defenders on his way to 15 goals in 2012/13.
As Christian Dailly noted in midweek it stands to reason that when better players are up against inferior opposition week after week, it has a deleterious effect on standards and makes it harder to raise them when they are asked to face superior teams. For all the talk among Rangers players that today's game was a chance at redemption, the Tenner Bet just cannot ignore United, 5-0 conquerors of Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the quarters, against a team that required two attempts to get past Albion Rovers.
The other semi-final, being played tomorrow, pits Aberdeen against a St Johnstone side that will attempt to overcome history and the second-best team in Scotland's top flight. Tommy Wright's men have failed in four attempts to beat Aberdeen this season and the Perth club have never won a major trophy. The Tenner Bet has been impressed by the work Wright has done at McDiarmid Park but it must be weighted against what his counterpart at Pittodrie, Derek McInnes, has achieved. Aberdeen's win in last month's League Cup final had a two-fold effect: it ended almost two decades of torment in the cups and removed a significant amount of pressure from the shoulders of his players. At 15/13, they are too well priced to ignore.
SELECTION
An Aberdeen and Dundee United double pays 3.6/1 and is this week's pick.
SEASON'S TOTAL
I don't want to say 'I told you so' . . . well, actually, I do. The decision to stake each-way with bet365 who were offering half stakes back worked a treat not least because they also paid out at the SP which was just lovely given that I took Pineau De Re at 22/1 and it obliged at 25s. The total stands at £61.72
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article