It is ten past two in the morning. The flat is dark except for the bluish glow of your laptop screen. Somewhere in Houston, a World Cup group stage match has just entered the second half, and the pre-match favourite is losing 1-0 to a team ranked forty places below them. The in-play odds have […]

In 2014, a punter in Limerick put fifty euro on Germany to beat Brazil 7-1 in the World Cup semi-final. The bookmaker priced it at 500/1. Nobody — not the punter, not the bookie, not a single soul in football — thought it would happen. Then Toni Kroos scored twice in sixty-nine seconds, Miroslav Klose […]

A mate of mine in Cork once turned a fiver into nearly four grand during the 2022 World Cup. He strung together six legs across the group stage — Argentina to beat Saudi Arabia, Spain to top Group E, Japan to nick a win off Germany. The first two landed. Japan stunned everyone. Then Morocco […]

I grew up watching my father study the Racing Post at the kitchen table every Saturday morning, circling selections with a biro that was permanently lodged behind his right ear. He would walk to Paddy Power on the high street, fill in a docket by hand, and come home either delighted or philosophical. That was […]