Value at 'blowout' end of the market?
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The -3 handicap available from Ladbrokes last week (see below) was a must bet and has now been pushed to a more realistic -7.
That doesn’t mean all the value has gone out of the handicap market however.
That is particularly the case at the ‘blowout’ end of things.
A word of warning – sometimes teams that deserve to get smashed don’t, and sometimes teams that don’t deserve to get smashed do. Scotland may just be the type of team that deserve it.
Wales should have done it, but played too narrow and made too many changes to push home their advantage, while France failed to put the physicality into their game required to really dominate but won anyway.
Ireland ought not make the same mistakes. They will be exceptionally physically committed – with those four changes adding extra energy and vigour – and they will want to score as many points as possible from minute one to 80. There will be no let-up and if they get on top they will continue to work hard, simply due to the fact that the Six Nations Championship may end up going to points difference.
As Irish teams have found in the past, that type of motivation is also likely to be far more powerful and positive than the Scots, who are playing for respectability.
Final note – the ref is Jonanthan Kaplan, which could be a slight concern if he takes against Ireland for some reason. However, Ireland play refs very well and should be the more dominant and disciplined team at the breakdown. They could well get the majority of calls there, much as Wales did against England.
On that basis, the Ireland -20 point handicap is a decent price at 9/2.
In the other games, France should beat England but you can’t write off one of those ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’ performances. That said, English captain Steve Borthwick has been a hugely unimpressive figure throughout and there must a question mark over whether he can really unite this team.
Wales should beat Italy but I could see it being a little more nervy than they are bargaining for. Three bad performances and the 10 Welsh changes will motivate the Italians, though their tackling and discipline has been much weaker this year than in the past. Possibly a scratchy first half followed by Wales strecthing away a bit to win by 25-7 or so……
Recommended: 2 points, Ireland (-20) to beat Scotland at 9/2.