Category Archives: Sports

Geldings red hot tips for Sandown on 7 February 2015

 

42The Gelding’s attention is on Sandown tomorrow and he hopes that he gets a bit more of lady luck than he did last week. Oh what might have been, if the racing gods had smiled…..one of the tips beaten by a lip!

 

Hopefully there’ll be a ‘prompt return’ for the ladies at the Tennis club!

As always the bets are on an each way and all up basis.

Sandown

Race 1 Horse 1 – Jacquinot Bay
Race 2 Horse 1 – Taiyoo (for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 4 Horse 1 – Prompt Return (also for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 7 Horse 3 – Chivalry
Race 8 Horse 4 – O’Malley

Good luck and good punting!

The Gelding

Friday musing – Socceroos, Asian Cup……

Chris Barwin HillsLike a lot of other people around Australia I watched the Asian Cup Final from Sydney on Saturday night.

What a great game!

I think we can now say that this team has created it’s own history and we can start to move on from the achievements of the 2006 World Cup squad. I am not suggesting they are as good as that team, but they have definitely established themselves as a team on the rise. Perhaps on Saturday night they were not as technically good as a the South Koreans, but they defended as well as I have seen an Australian team defend and created enough chances to win the game. It was also good to see a number of A League players playing key roles in the win.

Ange Postecoglou has consistently requested that the team be judged on their performance in the Asian Cup on home soil and not on their lead up form overseas. As most of the pundits have tim cahillobserved, he has been vindicated.

The Asian Federation is not strong compared to other federations around the world so the friendly coming up in Germany later this year may well give an indication of how far the team has progressed.

Have a great weekend!

Gelding’s red hot tips for tomorrow’s Flemington race meeting

Feb 27 2011 023The Gelding’s attention returns to Flemington tomorrow and after last week’s reasonable outing (2 winners and 2 placings from five selection) he is keen and eager to get amongst the winners again.

As always the bets are on an each way and all up basis.

Flemington

Race 1 Horse 1 – Wawail (for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 3 Horse 9 – Better Land
Race 5 Horse 1 – Akzar
Race 6 Horse 7 – Spanish Love
Race 8 Horse 12 –Tycoon Tara (also for the ladies at the Tennis club)

Good luck and good punting!

The Gelding

Geldings red hot tips for 24 January 2015

Feb 20 2011 015The Gelding’s attention is at Moonee Valley tomorrow and after a reasonably successful result last week (2 winners/2 placings) he is keen to get among the winners again tomorrow.

As always the bets are on an each way and all up basis.

Moonee Valley

Race 1 Horse 4 – Royal Snitzel (for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 2 Horse 2 – Arena Rock
Race 5 Horse 9 – Churchill‘s Wit (also for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 6 Horse 8 – Anfitriona
Race 7 Horse 1 – Dissident

Good luck and good punting!

The Gelding

Friday musing – Packers, Seahawks, DeflateGate, Super Bowl XLIX….

There’s almost too much to talk about in today’s Friday musing!

First off let’s look at the recently completed Championship games from the NFL. The Green Bay Packers had the Seattle Seahawks on Carroll2toast with about five minutes left in the game. At that time the odds makers had the Seahawks less than a five percent chance of winning. A reported six things had to go wrong for the Packers for them to lose the game….and they all did.

Perhaps the worst blunder during those five minutes was Packer Brandon Bostick trying to catch an onside kick with his helmet….denying Jordy Nelson an easy catch and gifting the ‘fumble’ to the Seahawks. That play will haunt Packer fans for years to come.

Whilst on the Seahawks, I came across a 2012 article from the Bleacher Report that gave Pete Carroll and the Seahawks an ‘F’ for that year’s draft…and I quote ‘Pete Carroll is proving why he didn’t Carrollmake it in the NFL the first time….selecting Russell Wilson…was by far the worst move of the draft’. Shows the so called media experts don’t always get it right!

I never thought deflating footballs would become a pastime in New England. The NFL are investigating and have rounded up the usual suspects. The Patriots coach, Bill Belichick says he has no explanation on how the footballs became deflated. I wonder who belichicktook it on themselves then to make that decision. Surely some simple investigation will locate the culprit? Money is on the NFL not sorting this thing out anytime soon…especially with Super Bowl XLIX only a week away.

My tip for the Super Bowl – Pete Carroll and the Seahawks by 10!

If you thought deflating footballs was a stretch, consider the noble sport of golf. In the last week we have seen Robert Allenby’s dubious allenbyreporting of an incident after a night out in Waikiki that left his face re-arranged. His report has it that he was drugged, abducted, bashed and robbed. Reports are now surfacing that Allenby was drunk and passed out in the street and ‘face planted’ a rock. It was even big enough news to make ESPN’s Keith Olbermann show. Olbermann had much glee in highlighting the inconsistencies in Allenby’s story.

As if that wasn’t enough for golf, we then have Tiger Woods’ missing tooth to contend with. Story is he was hit in the mouth by an errant mounted video camera. Whether it did or it didn’t, you would pay money to be in a three on the golf course with Woods and Allenby just for the inside information on those stories.

Have a great weekend!

Gelding’s red hotties for 17 January 2015

IMG00123-20101219-1210The Gelding’s attention is again at Flemington and after a some near misses last week, he is hoping that lady luck will smile on him today.

As always, the bets are on an each way and all up basis.

Flemington

Race 2 Horse 2 – Spanish Love (for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 3 Horse 3 – Her Story
Race 5 Horse 4 – Taiyoo
Race 7 Horse 5 – Red Excitement
Race 9 Horse 2 – Reldas (also for the ladies at the Tennis club)

Good luck and good punting!

The Gelding

Friday musing – Cobalt in the feed?, Darts, Taylor Walker….

Chris Barwin HillsThe big story this week was the three horse racing trainers possibly facing charges for traces of cobalt being found in their horses. This has the capacity to damage a sport that is already damaged so it will be interesting to see which way it goes. My gut feel is that the racing industry cannot afford to have three of the biggest trainers in the state suspended and this will be a shot across their bows as a warning to everyone else. The suggestion at the moment is that the horses that tested positive were well over the prescribed limit which would negate any assertion that it was bad feed, but it is difficult to accept that these trainers, who know the rules have allowed their horses to be administered cobalt to a level which is banned. These guys have teams of vets working for them and need to keep very detailed records of feed and supplements/medications which are administered, so what went wrong? There is more to this than the Essendon supplements saga, but it won’t attract as much attention because horse racing just doesn’t have the profile save for the Spring Carnival.

I didn’t go to the darts at Etihad stadium last week, however, I did see the news on Sunday and the behaviour of the crowd was deplorable. If it was a higher profile sport the examination of the episode would have continued all week. dartsThe reports from the event last year were that it was a great success, but now any future tournament will be highly scrutinised. Imagine if you attended on Saturday night and had your night ruined in that fashion, you would not be very happy. Perhaps they need to breathalyse patrons as they enter the stadium!

I was interested to see that Adelaide had named Taylor Walker as their captain for next year and for me, it raised the concerns about full forwards as captains. There is no doubt you can captain the side from full forward. The AFL’s longest serving captain, Stephen Kernahan, spent more time at full forward than centre half forward and I think the same could be said about Wayne Carey. Jason Dunstall was a genuine full forward who was captain and hisTaylor Walker influence was difficult to assess as Hawthorn were on the slide when he took over. My question mark about full forwards as captains is they have a limited opportunity to influence the game from that position, unless, like Carey, they can be swung onto the ball. I think the main reason Patrick Dangerfield didn’t get the position is not because he may return to Victoria, but his lack of popularity with his team mates which emerged late last year. It will be interesting to see how Walker goes.

Have a great weekend!

Socceroos need to keep winning to earn respect

kruse“We deserve some respect’….so says Socceroo forward Robbie Kruse. Personally, I think Robbie is getting just a little ahead of himself with that comment. Australia, on the back of some poor results over the last eighteen months has slumped to a lowly ranking of #100 of the 209 teams ranked by FIFA. It will take more than a few wins over fellow strugglers to earn recognition from the fans.

If one looks at the results the Socceroos have turned in (not including the Asian Cup currently underway) in the 15 matches played since September 2013, their record is won 2 drawn 2 and lost 11 – goals scored 12 – goals conceded 37. Not a flattering scoreline at all. In that run of matches we managed to lose to Qatar (ranked 92) and Canada (ranked 112). Sure we played some powerhouse teams like Brazil, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and France along the way but that will always be the case in the world game.

After two rounds of the Asian Cup we have beaten up on Oman (ranked 93) and Kuwait (ranked 125). My expectation is that we should beat these teams at home, so I am not getting carried away just yet. Let’s see how we go against the Korean Republic (ranked 69) in our next game and some of the other heavy hitters of the region in the rest of the competition.

If Kruse wants ‘respect’ it needs to be earned on the pitch with the Socceroos performing well against quality opposition!

Gelding’s red hot tips for 10 January 2015

sean & geldingThe Gelding’s attention returns to Flemington tomorrow and after a handy day on the punt last Saturday, he is looking to pick more winners than placed horses tomorrow.

As usual, the bets are on an each way and all up basis.

Flemington

Race 2 Horse 2 – Every Faith (for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 4 Horse 7 – Relaunch
Race 7 Horse 8 – Aeratus (also for the ladies at the Tennis club)
Race 8 Horse 15 – Orujo
Race 9 Horse 7 – Samartested

Good luck and good punting!

The Gelding

Friday musing is back – Test Cricket, Big Bash, Asian Cup & more

Chris Barwin HillsHappy New Year!

Well it is all about the cricket at this time of the year and my first observation relates to the standard of pitches that have been produced for the series against India. For as well as Virat Kohli and Steve Smith have played, there has been a lot of runs and not many wickets.

A lot of the Australian wickets have gone in the chase for quick runs. I wonder if the Indian authorities warned their Australian counterparts about preparing wickets to suit Mitchell Johnson. Johnson has struggled on these pitches with only one session in Brisbane where has been truly dangerous. It is hard to be too critical when there has been two results from the first three tests, with Australia batting India out of the Melbourne test to ensure they won the series.

However, I am sure if these pitches had been presented to the English last year there is no way we could have won 5-0. Nathan Lyon will be the number one bowler for the series and who would have predicted that at the start? I think in many ways for as well as the Indians have played, their fielding and catching has been sub-standard and you can’t keep dropping catches and win matches.

I hark back to one of those ill fated series in the 1980s against the West Indies when the Aussies dropped at least 30 catches. When you are playing one of the best teams in the world you have to limit their scoring not let them off the hook.

Continuing the cricket theme I have a comment about the Phil Hughes tributes. When does it all get too much?  I understand the test team has been truly rocked by what happened and it is quite unparalleled in cricket, however, I think we are getting very close to putting a lid on the tributes. His family have been decidedly absent from the public eye and I now think it is time for the players pay their respects in private.

Finally on the cricket, I have watched a little of the Big Bash and it is great to sit down and watch a bit of sport at night time and see a result. I am sure Channel 10 are rapt they have the rights. My accolade goes out to Brad Hogg playing for the Perth Scorchers. At 43 years of age he came on the other night and landed his spinners perfectly and essentially set up the win for Perth. Amazing!

The Asian Cup starts tonight and I must say my enthusiasm has yet to be piqued. Perhaps once it gets going I will be more interested, but at this stage the jury is out.

Continuing the World Game theme, I went to the Melbourne Victory v Perth Glory game last week in Geelong and while the result was not so good and it was still very hot, the crowd and the atmosphere were very good. I think of the AFL venues, Kardinia Park lends itself to soccer because it has narrow wings. The Victory have two more games at the venue in the next two years and my guess is the experiment will be continued or even expanded.

Have a great weekend!