Northwich Victoria have to win sometime and I'll be there when they do

Non-league / Gary Boswell / 04 October 2007 / Leave a Comment

Boswell's Betfair Blog - a bi-weekly round up of the best plays in the world of non-
league football

Boswell's Betfair Blog - a bi-weekly round up of the best plays in the world of non-
league football (Gary Boswell has been a non-league football betting specialist since 1999 and was the betting correspondent for the Non-League paper-2001-2006. He was a close season transfer coup for the new international publication NonLeague Today and also signed to write for Betfair at the end of the 06/07 season).

Growing up as a lad in Birmingham in the seventies, one of the rites of passage was to give a girl a good time on a day trip to Weston-Super-Mud. The image of painted toenails disappearing into the legendary Weston quagmire is as fresh now as if it had happened yesterday and I can never contemplate a bet on W-S-M without conjuring again the emotionally charged images of passion and flesh all bound up in miles and miles of what Flanders and Swann named 'glorious mud!'

When I first went to watch the Mare play football, I was a bit surprised to find that they don't play on the beach! Quagmires, however, are in the local consciousness and they play football accordingly. Delightful then to see them doing so well this season with the aptly named Dean Grubb starring up front. There's also the presence of Marc McGregor who has been coming off the bench. I'd been wondering what had happened to the ex-Forest Green hotshot and his presence further inspires me to follow the Mudlovers this season. Tony Ricketts has made something of a fortress of the Woodspring and the confidence that comes with that makes them worth a bet at table-proppers Sutton in the Blue Square South. Early odds posting suggests that we might realistically get some 2.8 matched on a LAY on Sutton which looks well worth taking to me with the Mare in such rampant form.

The other bet to contemplate in the BS South is in the Maidenhead-Newport fixture. Peter Beadle's County are proving the league's eminent Scrooges with just four concedes in ten games and Johnson Hippolyte's Maidenhead - without a win yet at York Road - are going to have to go some to get on the scoresheet. They do, however, come in on the back of six away at lowly Brockenhurst in the FA Cup last week and such confidence boosters should not go unconsidered. All the league evidence would however point to a marginal win for title contenders County and I share that view of the likely outcome but will be laying Maidenhead at 3.0 if I can get it simply because I always fear the 0-0 draw whenever County play.

One of the great hobbies of any football season is trying to predict when the first win will happen for a club struggling at the foot. Goes hand in hand with predicting the first defeat for the teams at the top. In both cases you are almost always getting gigantic odds anomalies on the match bet projections simply because odds are often erroneously formed by those looking at league tables rather than likely outcomes of any 90 minutes of football.

A case in point this weekend as Weymouth are priced up at around 1.58 for this weekend's visit of 'without-a-win' Northwich on whom you might conceivably get as big as 8.0 or 9.0 matched. Droyslden were matched at 13.0 last Saturday at Torquay and were 1-0 up with just ten minutes to go and unlucky not to hang on. The win has to come some time and I'll be there when it does!

I wrote last week that Vics were so bad at the back that their win might not happen but new manager Dino Maamria installed new steel into the back four midweek at home to Kidderminster. His policy of 'honestly identifying where the mistakes are happening and working all week on ways to correct them' paid dividends as they blunted Constable & Co and secured only their second point of the season.

They have a good chance now to go one better at the Wessex where Weymouth have proved vulnerable and already have the record of granting Stafford Rangers their first win. Vics will need only to blunt Jefferson Louis as star player Beavon is reputedly still unfit whilst their own strikeforce has actually been firing ok throughout and can be expected to be successful against the wobbly Terras back four. At the odds, the Lay on Weymouth looks the way to play.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
3pt LAY on Weymouth against Northwich Victoria at 1.58 or less
2pt LAY on Maidenhead United against Newport County at 3.0 or less
2pt LAY on Sutton United against Weston-Super-Mare at 2.8 or less