Weekly Articles "Road to Riches" by Rich 'Tighty' Prew
The Road to Riches Weekend of 10th-11th May
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, On the flat at Ascot, Haydock, Leicester, Lingfield and Nottingham and over the jumps at Hexham and Warwick.
- Football, Premier League fixtures include Liverpool v Arsenal
- Cricket, the IPL continues
- Golf, The PGA Championship at the Quail Hollow Club in North Carolina
- Tennis, The ATP Italian Open continues
Royal Ascot
Neil’s Royal Ascot (Full Package 17th - 21st June 2025) is now live for subscription costing £199 Here
Free Tip
Punjab Super Kings v Mumbai Indians 11am Sunday in Dharamsala
The third of three games in this IPL in the Himalayan venue of Dharamsala, where conditions can favour seam bowling and the second of the games so far this week was both rain affected then abandoned due to a power fault in the area.
That said scores of 236-5 and 110-1 after 10 overs suggest that the Dharamsala pitches so far this year are not as helpful as they can often be for the bowlers.
These are the penultimate group stage games for both teams, and both are well set for to reach the knockout stages. Punjab are 3rd with 7 wins 3 losses and two no-results and Mumbai 4th with 7 wins and 5 losses. A loss here for either puts their hopes of qualification for ther knockout stages in serious jeopardy.
Mumbai lost their first four games this year then then won 7 in a row to go temporarily top before losing a tight one to Gujarat on Tuesday.
For Punjab key players are batsman Shreyas Iyer with 405 runs at 50 and a strike rate oif 180. A new captain this year, his game has gone to another level. A new Captain taken game to new level. In the bowling ranks leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal has 14 wickets at 24, including a hat-trick whilst left arm quick Arshdeep Singh has 16 wickets at 19, all taken with the new ball in the opening powerplay including 3-16 last time out.
For Mumbai, Rohit Sharma has had a disappointing tournament so far, 300 runs in 11 innings. The batting line-up has been instead led by Suryakumar Yadav with 510 runs at an average of 63 at a strike rate of 170 batting at four with three fifties. Currently he is the top run scorer in the tournament.
The bowling line-up has the huge advantage of fielding Trent Boult and Jasprit Bumrah in tandem. Boult has 18 wickets, second in the competition alongside Hazelwood, at under 20. Bumrah was injured at the start of the tournament but has recovered to take 13 wickets at 16 and under 7 runs an over. All-rounder Hardik Pandya also has 13 wickets.
Odds for the game have Mumbai 8/13 favourites, Punjab (the home team, but at a secondary venue) 11/8 underdogs.
Various possible player bets here. For Punjab Iyer at 3/1 is a solid favourite in the top batsman market, Arshdeep at 9/4 on the short side in the bowling market.
For Mumbai Yadav is 11/4 top batsman and Trent Boult over 3/1 top bowler behind Bumrah at around 9/4. It is Boult that appeals given his form in this year’s IPL.
10 points Trent Boult Top Mumbai Indians bowler at 31/10 BetVictor, 11/4 Ladbrokes/Coral (more firms to follow)
Workload
England have appointed Harry Brook to their white-ball captaincy. Brook will lead a talented group of players who had gone stale and lost confidence under the Jos Buttler.
Brook is the best young batsman in the country, guaranteed a place across formats. He has leadership experience having overseen last summer’s 3-2 ODI defeat by Australia. He also captained Northern Superchargers in the 2024 Hundred.
Brook and coach Brendon McCullum can now look ahead to reshaping the 50-over team ahead of the 2027 World Cup in South Africa. In their favour there looks to be a strong possibility that the domestic schedule will change from 2025 moving the 50 over competition out of a direct clash with the Hundred in August to begin in April thus offering the opportunity for Hundred players to develop in 50 over cricket. Currently no England players play any 50-over domestic cricket and their skills, different to those required in T20s, have fallen behind.
Brook was chosen ahead of Ben Stokes, who would have been a stopgap option with concerns about his physical workload playing three formats or appointing a specialist white-ball captain from outside the current group such as Sam Billings and Sam Curran.
There are potential downsides to Brook’s appointment, primarily that overworking the brightest young English player could affect his form across all three formats. The biggest 2025 priorities for England are the five-Test series against India at home this summer and an away Ashes series in Australia this winter. England need Brook at his very best and fully focused on Test cricket to stand a chance of winning both. Over-playing and/or a loss of form is the big worry for an important player. There will be a need to manage Brook’s workload over the next few months very carefully. As well as six Tests, one against Zimbabwe and five against India, there are six ODIs against the West Indies and South Africa and another nine T20s against those opponents and Ireland this summer alone.
Brook himself has begun the workload management process by withdrawing from the current IPL, forgoing a £590,000 fee and likely to lead to a multi-year ban from the competition.
In the event of Brook being rested England need an able deputy. No decision has been made on this yet but ideally it should be someone who is a white-ball specialist. Phil Salt is the name that jumps out for this role, even if his ODI form has not been great of late.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 8th February 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £68,468 All bets have an ROI +2.71%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £72,468, a 1711% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 3rd-4th May
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, On the flat at Doncaster, Goodwood, Newmarket (Guineas weekend) and Thirsk and over the jumps at Hexham and Uttoxeter
- Football, Premier League fixtures include Chelsea v Liverpool
- Rugby Union, European Champions Cup Semi-Finals
- Cricket, the IPL continues
- Formula One, the Miami Grand Prix
- Snooker, the 2025 World Championship final
- Golf, The Myrtle Beach Classic and Truist Championship on the USPGA Tour and the Turkish Open on the DP World Tour
- Tennis, ATP Italian Open
Royal Ascot
Neil’s Royal Ascot (Full Package 17th - 21st June 2025) is now live for subscription costing £199 Here
Free Tip
European Rugby Champions Cup Semi-Final
Bordeaux v Toulouse 3pm Sunday
A word about the other semi-final first. At 5.30pm on Saturday Leinster host Northampton in Dublin as 21.5-point favourites after winning their first two knockout games in this tournament this year by a scarcely believable 62-0 and 52-0, the first times any teams have been kept pointless in 257 Champions Cup knockout games!
Our ante-post bet on Bordeaux made last October has ended with the toughest run-out possible with holders and Top 14 leaders Toulouse and then, theoretically, Leinster ERCC runners up for each of the last three years.
This semi-final is being played at the Matmut Atlantique stadium, home of Bordeaux in Ligue 1 football.
Bordeaux and Toulouse were drawn into the same pool this year and both won 4 games out of 4 against English, Irish and South African opponents. Bordeaux won the pool by gaining one extra bonus point compared to Toulouse, ending up as the top seed for the knockouts, Toulouse the fourth seed.
In this year’s top 14 in France Toulouse are top and Bordeaux third, dropping from second with a home loss to La Rochelle last week with a rotated side.
In the ERCC knockouts this year Bordeaux have scored 90 points in two games running in six tries in each of the home games against Ulster and Munster.
This is very “on brand” for a hugely exciting team where winger Damien Penaud has scored an incredible 12 tries in the competition so far, and Bielle-Biarrey has 6. The side will attack from anywhere.
The potential downside is the defence which conceded 60 points to Ulster and Munster. Certainly a soft underbelly that will need to be much better to get past Toulouse.
Toulouse in the knockouts beat Sale 38-15 then crept past Toulon away 21-18 from 12-0 down. If it is close late on, which it might be, they have the trump card of goal-kicker Thomas Ramos top scorer in the competition this year with 87 points and an 85% kicker.
On netural territory, albeit in Bordeaux’s home city, Toulouse are -4.5 here. Their stronger defence in what is likely not to be a game of runaway attack on both sides is likely to see them home to another Toulouse-Leinster final
15 points Toulouse -4.5 points to beat Bordeaux at 10/11 generally
Les Lions
The British and Irish Lions could be set to face France with talks at an ‘advanced’ stage between the two parties
Ahead of the tour to New Zealand in 2029 the Lions and their counterparts, the French Rugby Federation (FFR), are looking at potentially staging a couple of one-off Tests before they head to the southern hemisphere.
It would be similar to the Lions fixture encounter with Argentina later this year which takes place in Dublin on June 20, eight days prior to their first game of the 2025 tour in Perth against Western Force on June 28.
They have met once before, although it came in a non-capped friendly in 1989 in which the Lions edged to a narrow 29-27 triumph.
Should talks continue to move in a positive direction, the main issue will invariably come around player availability, given that the contest is likely to take place in mid to late June.
That means the encounter will be hosted outside of World Rugby’s international window in July, while it could also clash with the French domestic final. This year, the Top 14 showpiece event goes ahead on the same day the Lions play the Force in their tour opener.
Organisers may therefore have to either convince the FFR to release their top players for the Test or come to an arrangement whereby those involved in the Top 14 final will not be selected.
France tend to use the mid-year internationals as a development tool and rest their main stars, like they will do when they play the All Blacks in July this year.
None of those who feature in the Top 14 final on June 28 are expected to be included in the squad while other key individuals could also stay at home irrespective of how far their clubs get in the league play-offs.
It has long been suggested that the Lions should consider facing France, not just as a one-off game but as part of a three-Test tour. However, there are no plans currently to interrupt the schedule which sees them face Australia, New Zealand and South Africa on rotation every four years. This could feasibly be a step towards that, though, should the Lions and FFR confirm these one-off Tests.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 8th February 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £68,468 All bets have an ROI +2.71%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £72,468, a 1711% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 26th-27th April
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, On the flat at Doncaster, Haydock, Leicester, Ripon, over the jumps at Sandown and on the all-weather at Wolverhampton.
- Football, FA Cup Semi Finals and Premier League fixtures including Liverpool v Tottenham
- Cricket, the IPL continues
- Snooker, the 2025 World Championship continues
- Golf, The Byron Nelson Championship on the USPGA Tour
- Tennis, ATP Madrid Open continues
Royal Ascot
Neil’s Royal Ascot (Full Package 17th - 21st June 2025) is now live for subscription costing £199 Here
Free Tip
IPL Delhi Capitals v Royal Challengers Bangalore 3pm Sunday
Halfway through the group stages and so far our 12-1 ante-post bet on the Delhi Capitals is going well, they are second in the table with six wins from eight games, the latest a comfortable win over Lucknow on Tuesday a return to form following a couple of setbacks after five successive wins to start the tournament.
This in a tournament where a few of the fancied teams, notably Chennai and Sunrisers have been struggling. RCB meanwhile have played 9 games and lie third with 6 wins most recently beating Rajasthan who botched their chase.
Across the 2025 IPL recruitment has been a major factor and for Delhi the arrival of KL Rahul to bat in the middle order (Delhi top scorer with 323 runs, including three fifties, at an average of 65) and Mitchell Starc (11 wickets) to lead the bowling attack have been key to their improvement in fortunes this season.
Starc has 17 wickets in the first six overs of the innings since the start of last season, more than any bowler. However this has come at a cost. Since his return to the IPL in 2024, no bowler has a worse Total Bowling Impact* inside the Powerplay than Starc's -100.8, coming at an average of -4.8 per game.
(*Total Bowling impact = a Cricviz measure designed to provide an objective look at bowling performance, beyond traditional metrics of average, economy rate and strike rate providing a single figure that can be compared between players and across conditions. The higher the impact score, the better. The higher the negative score, the worse)
Left arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav is meanwhile having an “all-time” season so far. His Average Bowling Impact of +13.7 is currently the best for any spinner in any season of the IPL. Bowling to lower order batsmen (7-11) in the IPL since 2022 he has only allowed 117 runs from 142 balls taking 16 wickets at a 7.31 average and a 4.94 economy rate. No bowler has a lower average to the tail in this timeframe.
This might matter against RCB which is a very top-heavy batting order with top scorer Kohli (322 runs), Padikkal and Salt up top with Livingstone and Tim David in the middle order but very little in the way of lower order runs. The key bowler is Josh Hazlewood has been exceptional in the final overs this season with seven wickets, conceding at 8.6 rpo & strike rate of 9.2 with an average bowling impact of +2.4. Of all pace bowlers this season, only Jasprit Bumrah (+5.5) has a higher average bowling impact.
So far in the 2025 IPL Delhi’s two main bowling options have performed as follows:
Yadav 32 overs, 208 runs 12 wickets at 6 runs per over (best economy in the 2025 IPL)
Starc 29 overs 292 runs 11 wickets at 10 runs per over.
Odds in the Delhi top bowler market are:
Yadav 13/5
Starc 14/5
4/1 bar including all the domestic bowlers.
This includes veteran Mohit Sharma and Mukesh Kumar who has 9 wickets so far including 4/33 in this week’s Lucknow win.
In terms of the IPL at Delhi so far, the venue has seen scores of 163, 205 and 188. A decent batting wicket.
Between these two sides RCB chased 163 to win with two overs to spare by six wickets earlier this season in Bengaluru.
10 points Kuldeep Yadav Top Delhi Capitals bowler at 9/5 with William Hill, 13/5 Betfair Sportsbook/Paddy Power, 23/10 Bet Victor, 9/4 Bet365 and Ladbrokes/Coral
County Change
The County Championship looks increasingly likely to be cut from 14 matches to 12 per team from 2026 after another review of the domestic structure.
The new 2025 season could be the last to feature 14 matches per team as a review is held into how to improve the domestic schedule, with Rob Andrew, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s managing director, saying all three county competitions “can be improved”.
The schedule was last cut from 16 to 14 matches ahead of the 2017 season, but there has been a looming threat in recent seasons that further reductions could come. The 2022 Strauss revieww recommended a radical reduction to 10 Championship matches and was thrown out by the county chairs, who require a two-thirds majority to enact any change.
Andrew believes there is more of an appetite for change among county leaders three years on, with the global landscape of the game changing rapidly and the Professional Cricketers’ Association regularly calling for a reduction in the overall volume of cricket.
ECB officials say there is little interest in reducing the Championship to 10 matches but there is much discussion about dropping to 12. In addition, the 14 matches played in the Vitality Blast is in line for a cut to 12 with a view that the Blast needs a refresh, to give it renewed energy lost a little bit through the Hundred in recent years. Meanwhile, it is understood that there is a desire to see a portion of the Metro Bank One-Day Cup played at the start of the season, not entirely concurrent with the Hundred.
Volume of cricket is at the heart of the debate. The high-performance review was very much focused on performance only mainly the performance of the England team. This is a county led review focused on the domestic game cricket. What that looks like in terms of the number of games that are played will come out in the wash.
Any changes would be made in time for the 2026 season which is also likely to be the first with a full bells-and-whistles Hundred tournament, following the sale of stakes in the eight teams earlier this year.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 8th February 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £68,468 All bets have an ROI +2.71%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £72,468, a 1711% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 19th-20th April
Coming up this Weekend
- Horse Racing, On the flat at Musselburgh, over the jumps at Carlisle, Haydock and Huntingdon and on the all-weather at Wolverhampton
- Football, Premier League fixtures include Aston Villa v Newcastle United
- Cricket, the IPL continues
- Snooker, the start of the 2025 World Championship
- Formula One, the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix
- Golf, The Zurich Classic of New Orleans on the USPGA Tour and the Hainan Classic on the DP World Tour
- Tennis, ATP Madrid Open
Royal Ascot
Neil’s Royal Ascot (Full Package 17th - 21st June 2025) is now live for subscription costing £199 Here
Free Tip
The 2025 World Snooker Championship
First things first lets look at the shape of the draw making a simple assumption that if the Quarter-Final line-up is according to seedings, what does it look like?
Wilson v Allen
Selby v O’Sullivan
-------------------
Higgins v Williams
Brecel v Trump
Of course it’s highly unlikely to play out like this. Last year for example eight top sixteen seeds fell in the first round and such is the depth of the tour/strength of the qualifiers these days that something similar is very possible this year. Note the 16 Qualifiers include 5 former top sixteen seeds and of the record 10 Chinese players in the event six are young qualifiers including Xintong who hit 12 centuries in the Qualifiers and has a nice opening draw. Only three of the qualifiers are debutants.
You could also make a strong case that the 9th seed Neil Robertson would be a second-round favourite over 8th seed Mark Allen and 10th seed Ding Junhui would certainly be a warm favourite over 7th seed Luca Brecel (down to 47th in the provisional rankings after a wretched two years since he won his 2023 title) in the second round.
A fortnight ago I was planning to write this column and highlight the 7/1 each-way value on defending World Champion Kyren Wilson, who has been a “good” World Champion on and off the field. He’s won four more ranking titles this season and has beaten 7/2 tournament favourite Judd Trump in 3 ranking finals this season, is 6-1 over Trump in their last seven meetings and now 17-20 all-time against him.
Then John Higgins rose all the way up to number 3 in the seed rankings after his late season form including winning the Tour Championship (a 12-player ranking event) recently. This put Selby into Wilson’s half and gave Wilson a path to the title that realistically could go Xintong>Robertson>Selby>Trump. That would take some doing, without even considering that Ronnie might come through a Selby Quarter, a complete wild card as he hasn’t played since January and frankly we don’t know what Ronnie will show up.
I then re-looked at the outright market to search for value elsewhere, most likely in the far softer looking bottom half. After all the last two winners of the event have been at 50/1 (Brecel) and 28/1 (Wilson) pre the Crucible stages.
The market at the time of writing is as follows:
Trump 7/2
Selby 11/2
Wilson 7/1
O’Sullivan 7/1
Robertson 12/1
Higgins 12/1
Zintong 14/1 (back from ban, unseeded playing as amateur, no seed will want to draw him)
Allen 14/1
Murphy 16 /1
Hawkins 22/1
Ding 25/1
The third Quarter in particular drew my attention. Here we have Higgins, Xiao Guodong, Barry Hawkins and Mark Williams.
Because of his form in the second half of the season I regard 50-year-old Higgins as a “false” seed in terms of his position at number 3. At seed 6 Mark Williams has been struggling with his eyesight, experimenting with contacts, but was very out of form in both the players and tour Championships recently.
This looks to me a very winnable quarter for Barry Hawkins whose route to the latter stages of Williams>Higgins>Trump gives him a realistic shot of a semi-final, and were Trump to not go deep who knows beyond that?
Hawkins is known for his six-year Crucible span from 2013-18 where he made a World final, four semi-finals and a quarter-final. He then fell out of the top 16 but worked his way back on and recent form this season is consistent, reaching the semi-finals of the Tour Championships beating Trump 10-5 along the way, and he lost 10-9 to Wilson in the final of the German Masters and 10-8 to Trump in the final of the UK. He hasn't got the easiest first round draw with Vafaei who is just 7/4 to beat him but that has led to some 25/1+ being around outright.
I have been waiting for odds for the Quarters, not available as I publish but worth a look at the odds to win the Third Quarter if markets go up before Saturday.
EDIT 12.30pm Friday: Third Quarter odds are Higgins 2/1 Hawkins 7/2 Williams 13/2 Guodong 13/2 with Bet365.
Something more speculative would be the 20/1+ each-way for the title. Plenty of seeds falling along the way in the bottom half would help that along, with Judd Trump being the obvious obstacle if he won the Quarter.
8 points each way (1/2 1,2) Barry Hawkins to win the World Championship at 28/1 StarSports, 25/1 BetVictor and Betfair Sportsbook/Paddy Power, 22/1 Ladbrokes/Coral and Betfred, 20/1 widely available
Under Strain
The competitive element of the Premier League works partly because it keeps the ratio of prize money earned by its top-earning club roughly no bigger than 1.8 times the size of its lowest earner.
There was a time when the international rights revenue was simply divided by 20, but as that became a growth area so the biggest clubs insisted that part of it should be dictated by merit payments. The prize pot for this year’s FIFA Club World Cup is $1 billion, which will only widen the gap between the smaller teams and elite clubs, and the ratio has become strained in recent years.
There is a squeeze from the top global and European tournaments on the Premier League’s competitiveness. But it also comes from the other end and the Football Governance Bill, currently in the House of Lords, proposes assigning to the new independent regulator powers to do what the government has decided is most crucial for football: keeping it all sustainable.
No clubs are better equipped to deal with heavy government regulation than the biggest and the wealthiest. Not so the smaller clubs who might live on recruitment or data models: Brighton and Bournemouth for example. They are less able to lodge bonds to cover themselves for whatever doomsday scenario the regulator might imagine. That will severely curtail their competitiveness.
For ambitious clubs outside the elite there is much to concern them. Parachute payments are now a matter of some uncertainty. It is understood the regulator would have power to determine the value of parachute payments in the second and third years a club spends outside the Premier League after relegation.
No ambitious club can plan for the Premier League without parachute payments. No serious ownership can invest in the playing squad without the certainty that it will be able to manage those contracts in the event of relegation, which even for a well-run team must always be considered a possibility.
The likely teams facing relegation this year are the three promoted clubs but they all invested to varying degrees in being competitive last summer. In Ipswich Town’s case, to the tune of more than £100 million net. None of them could have done so without the safety net of a parachute payment that is, for now at least, set at a percentage of the 20th-placed club’s earnings, that falls year on year for three seasons.
The clubs are already subject to the profit and sustainability rules designed to keep the league competitive by trying to stop the wealthiest owners breaking the market. But the other side of the coin is the smaller clubs keeping their part of the bargain investing in competitive squads that sustain the jeopardy of match day.
If clubs are prevented from challenging those at the top then the league itself ceases to be what it was: competitive enough that the best can never be sure of winning from match day to match day.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 8th February 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £68,468 All bets have an ROI +2.71%
A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £72,468, a 1711% increase.
The Road to Riches Weekend of 12th-13th April
Coming up this weekend
- Horse Racing, On the flat at Brighton, Newbury, Nottingham and Thirsk, over the jumps at Ayr and Bangor-on-Dee.
- Football, Premier League fixtures include Newcastle United v Manchester United
- Rugby Union, the Investec Champions Cup Quarter Finals
- Cricket, the IPL continues
- Formula One, the Bahrain Grand Prix
- Golf, The RBC Heritage and Corales Punta Cana Championships on the USPGA Tour and the China Open on the DP World Tour
- Tennis, ATP BMW and Barcelona Opens
Royal Ascot
Neil’s Royal Ascot (Full Package 17th - 21st June 2025) is now live for subscription costing £199 Here
Free Tip
European Rugby Champions Cup Quarter Finals
Toulon v Toulouse Sunday 4pm
After last weekend’s last sixteen ties, Leinster are favourites for this year’s Champions Cup:
Leinster 5/4
Toulouse 15/8
Bordeaux 4/1
Northampton 16/1
Toulon 22/1
Glasgow 22/1
Munster 50/1
Castres 125/1
Undoubtedly the competition has some issues. 2023 and 2024 saw only 2 of 24 ties in the last sixteen and Quarter Finals won by away teams. 2025 saw only 1 of 8 last sixteen ties won by the away team, a famous win by Munster in La Rochelle.
Six of this year’s Quarterfinalists are Irish or French with sides form both countries having the structural advantage of the biggest salary cap (France) and best academy system (Ireland).
For the English sides the last sixteen saw only the fifth time a Premiership side conceded 60 points or more in a Champions Cup tie, and it was Saracens no less and then it happened again, Harlequins shipping 62 points in Dublin and losing 62-0 to Leinster.
Only Bath, Northampton and Gloucester have reached the last eight of the Champions Cup and Challenge cup combined, testament to how far behind our domestic competition is compared to the best in Europe.
That Northampton had a home tie in the last sixteen and a home tie in the last 8 against the weakest of the remaining French sides is a benefit of the sub-optimal tournament structure that seeds the last sixteen by Pool finishes. Last year’s finalists are also a major beneficiary in a half of the draw without the major French sides and with a path to the final going Harlequins/Glasgow/Northampton. Northampton is a side in the bottom half of the Premiership. Frankly it’s a surprise they are not odds-on for the tournament at this stage.
For Bordeaux, my ante-post tip, their “reward” for being the top seed into the knockout phase is a likely semi-final against Toulon or Toulouse (who they finished ahead of in their pool) the three sides making up three of the current top four in the Top 14. If they are to win it, they’ll be doing it the tough way.
Still the tournament isn’t that competitive even down to the last 8. Three of the four Quarterfinals sees double digit handicap favourites (Leinster -15, Northampton -14 and Bordeaux -11).
The exception is where Toulon (3rd in the top 14) host Toulouse (top of the Top 14 and defending European Champions and six-time winners) this weekend in the last of the Quarterfinals. Toulouse are six-point away favourites which pricked my ears when I saw it.
Toulon haven’t lost at home in Europe for 2 years, won 11 of 12 home games in the Top 14 last year and have won all 10 top 14 at home so far this season. They haven’t played Toulouse at home yet but beat them at home by a point last year
The Stade Mayol in Toulon on the Mediterranean coast sees Toulon play in a frenetic, cramped and passionate environment without question one of rugby’s bucket list experiences. The stadium itself is the centre-piece of the town. It is deafeningly loud, it’s vibrant and chaotic fun. The home advantage is clear.
Toulon are direct, big and powerful, perhaps they lack the gas around the back three to match the very best in France, but they’re a tough and physical side to beat.
Such is the strength in depth of French rugby that Toulon scrum-half Baptiste Serin isn’t near the national side but is nevertheless a wonderful player and in the likes of Argentine No.8 Facunda Isa and English exile second row David Ribbans they have some terrific forwards.
If Toulon were hosting an absolute full-strength Toulouse in a European tie then the Toulouse -6 where the line opened the week would seem fair enough but minus Dupont they are a way off peak form, down on efficiency and precision without their “Quarterback”. For example last weekend Sale led them 15-10 at half-time. Toulouse pulled away in the second half but lost Capuozzo to a serious looking injury in the second half. The line is now Toulouse -4.5 points.
That said of course you still have Ntamack, Ramos (and his 85% goal-kicking), Kinghorn, Jack Willis and a raft of French International forwards such as Cros and Marchand to contend with, a formidable side.
This should be an extremely close match that could go either way. Getting Toulon at home with a three-point plus start is a bet.
11 points Toulon +4.5 points at Evens Bet365 and 10/11 generally
Rock Bottom
There have been plenty of lows for Wales over the past 18 months, but the 68-14 ten-try rout by England in the final round of the 2025 Six Nations was a record defeat for Wales in the Five or Six Nations and saw a new nadir. It extended their losing run to 17 Tests, which is the longest endured by any Tier 1 team in the professional era.
Wales conceded 25 tries during their five matches in this Six Nations. For context, they conceded just two in Shaun Edwards’ first Championship campaign in 2008.
We’ll come onto the structural reasons for this performance but there are cyclical factors at play too. Over a dozen experienced Welsh internationals, some world class players included, retired in last 24 months leaving a young callow team to take over.
Interim Coach Wayne Sherratt said at the post England game press conference “There are four or five players here we can build a team around. But everyone always looks at the top of the pyramid. The base is where it counts. Any good team has got a good foundation underneath it, which is the age grade. Get the age grade right and then the top of the pyramid will look a lot better. I think there are some green shoots with the U20s, so it’s about trying to nurture that group of players.”
In terms of new appointments Wales will appoint the next permanent Wales head coach and the WRU director of rugby before Wales next play, a Summer tour to Japan.
The game went professional In 1995 and they are still trying to get it right. Time to end the bickering and take decisive action!
Who will the WRU go for as head coach? A quartet of candidates who have been mentioned repeatedly: Glasgow’s Franco Smith, Leicester’s Michael Cheika, Ireland’s Simon Easterby and Bristol’s Pat Lam.
Former Springbok fly-half Smith is favourite. At Glasgow, he has also shown an ability to rapidly implement his game plan with successful outcomes, winning the URC title. He has made no secret of his desire to return to being an international head coach at some point, having previously been at the helm of Italy. The question is whether he might be being lined up to take over the reins with Scotland before too long.
Wales have seven home matches to sell tickets for next season with the autumn Tests and the Six Nations. That is not going to be an easy task on the back of such a poor sequence of results and it will become even harder if the barren spell continues.
Just as important and arguably even more significant for the long term is the identity of the new Director of Rugby. Former Bridgend hooker Huw Bevan, the Union’s interim performance director, appears to be a frontrunner.
Whoever is appointed faces a huge challenge. They have to find a way of putting in place a pathway and a system which produces players who are able to meet the physical demands of Test rugby.
At the moment, Wales just haven’t produced enough young players to compete. They were blown away in the contact area by Scotland for 50 minutes and it was an even worse against England In every physical aspect of the game, whether it be scrum, maul or the collisions, they came second best.
They also struggled in the one-on-one situations, missing 25 tackles against England to add to the 33 they fell off in Edinburgh.
It’s crucial that the new deal between the WRU and the four regions is finally signed off, with a commitment to increased funding over the next few years. Then there are those two big appointments. The new Director of Rugby might decide that four regions is too many, and a side such as the Dragons based in Newport might be vulnerable.
Ultimately the system has to fix the grass roots, develop Academies and create a pathway for young players to develop into the national team. Italy for example have overtaken Wales at the bottom end of the Six Nations, not with too many wins yet but heaps of talent now in the senior national team having come from the Academy system.
Finally Wales need to identify and compete for players with Welsh Qualification playing around the world, something which all Tier one teams do and potentially remove the block on Welsh players playing overseas with less than 25 caps being ineligible for national selection. The player pool left without them is not deep enough for this policy to work as intended.
Betting Emporium results
The detailed results page has been updated on 8th February 2025. They can be found by clicking RESULTS
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