another nasty habit dies (GERS …1 Pars …0)

I’m never-ever EVER betting on a Rangers game ever, ever, ever again! And that’s an odds-on certainty.

Was out and about this morning, doing some practical stuff and, just to relieve the boredom, decided I’d go and shove on a fixed-odds coupon.

I’d got out the way of doing the Saturday coupon. I always shove on a few ante-post bets for the big tournaments but it’s been a long time since I did my four draws on a Saturday.

Wullie Hills, Ashton Lane, West End. You can barely notice it from the outside, in a lane off a lane, usually obscured by big, four-wheeled bottle bins. It was deserted on the inside and, just to prove my point, sparklingly refurbished since last I donated some of my hard-earned to that particular branch. A couple of wizened punters played at the dogs between studying the horses.

While the biggest of the screens showed the dogs being trapped at Crayford/Perry Barr/Wherever and the pathetically sultry-voiced tannoy lady assured us Hills were giving the best odds in the country for an Everton win at Anfield, and the fruit machine strobbed and sung, I took Wigan-West Ham, Sheffield Utd-Southampton, Rotherham-Bristol City and St Johnstone-Clyde. Four Xs, two whole shiney pound coins and I’d have my little-old-lady-on-Grand-National-day bit of fun.

I turned to toddle up to the counter. The manager was in the back office having something to eat before the mania of the horses began. The young assistant sat dolefully behind his til, tie already loosened at the knot, name-badge on skee-wiff. He’d obviously been talked into a few pints with his Monday-Friday, 9-5 mates last night and here he was bored and peakey.

I didn’t make that journey to the counter as quickly and as innocently as I’d intended. Suddenly something stirred within me: Mainly my eyeballs - towards another kind of gamble, toward an even jucier “opportunity”. If I’d been in the Greggs some fifty yards away I’d have asked for a soup and a stake bake initially then, by the time the assistant returned from the stove to take my money, I’d have seen the Chicken Oval bites and the Apple Danish with the cream bursting out. I was, however, in Wullie Hills and by the time I’d turned away from the counter to “put my pen back” I’d noticed the First Goalscorer coupon.

Couldn’t think about it too long or else I wouldn’t do it. Through my dizzeyed head went the following: “what kind of pathetic excuse for a “man” bets 2.00??!! - I feel a blue note burning my thigh - better give that fellah at the til another coupon to run through - keep his mind off the boredom - the value’s in defenders scoring - what games do I know enough about to pick a long-odds first scorer? - the game you’re going to, obviously! - Dunfermline defended deep against Celtic in last week’s cup final - Leishman has them on a damage limitation tactic these days - our strikers will be suffocated today - we’ll have to shove the centre-halves up for set-pieces - Soti scored recently at Ibrox and he’s 20/1 - tatsy! - but J-Rod scored from a Soti header even more recently and FUCK ME he’s 40/1! - do these people know nothing about gambling - they’re giving it away - a fiver gets me 200 and it’s a happy mother’s day for everyone! - HULLO, MY GOOD MAN OF THE CASH REGISTER AND HOW ARE YOU THIS FINE DAY TO BE STUCK BEHIND A PERSPEX SCREEN …”

Only when I saw Dado Prso’s first-half shot screaming from twenty five yards out towards the bottom of Bryn Halliwell’s right did I realise why it was probably something like twenty years since I’d had a bet on a Rangers game: Part of me - a base, purely instinctive, sub-human part of my being but it was there - was RELIEVED when Dado’s shot cannoned back off the inside of that post. Everyone ooooed but I silently phewed .. then despised myself.

I’d made the fatal mistake of mixing that strangest kind of business - gambling - with that strangest kind of pleasure - being ridiculously in-love with a football club. Or vice-versa. Would I have paid a fiver to guarantee a Rangers win today? Gladly! But, as De Niro’s voice-over explains about that Japanese guy in Casino, he doesn’t think about the money he’s not paying out, he only thinks about the money he’s not winning. Dado, had he scored, would have cost me 200.00 … said my unwanted inner voice.

We got plenty corners and a few free-kicks. J-Rod was up in that box a good dozen times before we actually scored. And, of course, it was Soti who knocked it in with just the kind of goal I’d predicted: A centre-half rising above the carnage created around our suffocated strikers. So while everyone else phewed at the deadlock being broken, I had my hard-luck story forming. I despised myself some more.

Not one of my fixed-odds results came up either. And I’ve decided to take up smoking this weekend … and the twiddley bit for re-setting my clock has just dropped off … Oooh, I bet this kindastuff won’t happen when Paul Le Guen’s here.

(Much more comment to come on today’s game troops - it’s just I have to get an early night if we’re losing that hour this weekend …)

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Published:
03.25.06 / 8pm
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