General Sports uploaded (22/12) - Cheltenham Festival Week 8 & Race Previews uploaded - Andy Richmond’s Beating The Bias (17/12) uploaded - General Sports uploaded (15/12) - Cheltenham Festival Week 7 & Weekend Race Previews uploaded
29/11/21
Now that we are almost into December it is time to outline plans for the website leading up to Christmas and into the New Year.
With regards to the opening weeks of the Jumps Season, we’ve been doing pretty well having had a decent couple of Cheltenham’s, Ascot and Newbury (would have been much better had Remastered flown the fourth-last) so hopefully that can continue onto Sandown, Cheltenham and Ascot in the run up to Christmas. We haven’t had an Ante Post Focus winner since Allmankind at 7/1 in the Old Roan Chase and in this week’s column I’ll be focussing on the Grand National with an early recommendation.
We’ve had three weeks of the 28 Cheltenham Festival columns with just two ante-post recommendations so far and Week 4 will be uploaded this week on Thursday rather than Tuesday due to my going away for a few days pre-Christmas rather than in early January this winter. I do have a few horses in mind ahead of their Christmas engagements so I’d have thought we would have between 6-8 ante-positions by the first week of the New Year. That column will continue every Tuesday at 7.00 p.m. until the Festival after this week bar Christmas/New Year which I will combine on January 4th - the date I have been given to be a first-time grandad. Yikes! The mother and grandmother were both two weeks late though.
With regards to the Race Previews, up until Christmas I will be covering Friday-Sunday racing as usual and then just the weekend once we are into the New Year. Over Christmas I will be covering the best of the action from Kempton, Leopardstown, Chepstow. Limerick, Wetherby and Newbury between December 26-29 and also Cheltenham’s New Year’s Day card.
With regards to other sports, I should have been at the Mosconi Cup last year but it had to be played in front of empty seats and moved to Coventry. This year it was the turn of taking place in Las Vegas but instead I have just learned that it will take place at Alexandra Palace again so I will be looking to attend on one of the four days (Dec 7-10) if there are any tickets left.
Sticking with cue sports and George Weyham is currently covering the UK Snooker Championship for us. He’ll also be overseeing the World Grand Prix from Coventry in mid-December before returning for the Masters in January.
December of course means the PDC World Darts Championship which begins on December 15th. I don’t know who Mike Henderson will end up advising as he bids to follow up his successful Gerwyn Price recommendation of last year but it’s definitely the most wide-open World Championships that I can recall so it should be a fun watch in front of a crowd again unlike last year.
We are three-quarters of the way through the NFL regular season and Andy Richmond will continue with his weekly previews all the way up to the Super Bowl. I don’t think that I can recall a more topsy-turvy season than this with shock results week after week. As such, it looks wide open as to which team will lift the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Nine teams are priced up at 12/1 with last season’s finalists of the Buccaneers and Chiefs now heading the betting.
Onto cricket and after his recommendations made an overall profit on the T20 World Cup, Paul Smith will return next week to cover The Ashes that begin on December 8th.
Paul Matthew also made a profit on his Rugby Union column recommendations on the recent Autumn Series Internationals and he will return next year to cover the Six Nations. So far so good with his Gallagher Premiership ante-post positions.
Will Steele will be going for five profitable Boxing columns in succession next month as he will be previewing the Joseph Parker v Derek Chisora world title fight that takes place on December 18th.
As for my Football columns, they will return early in January ahead of the third round of the FA Cup and when we know what clubs have made the knockout stages of the Champions League and Europa League and the respective draws. It was at this stage in the last two years were we found Arsenal at 14/1 and Villareal at 18/1.
We are now into the final furlong in the Sporting Predictions Competition and I have given the selections of the Top 10 so that they can follow it to a conclusion.
