Memories

A spectacular day for Football Elite, with three Recommended Bets winners in Espanyol (2.6), Sampdoria (2.28) and Real Mallorca (2.45) and although the short-list selection on Blackburn Rovers to beat Manchester United didn't win at 8.0, covering the draw ensured a profit and a great day. I am covering the draw with all these selections. Since joining, only 16% of the Recommended Bet selections have actually lost the match, with only 20.83% from the Short-List. Malaga and Real Madrid were losers this weekend, but overall a good weekend. To a 10 point stake, Recommended Bets are now +15.70 and Short List are +104.23.

Not so good in the Masters where a lay of Phil Mickelson is about to give me a loss. I had high hopes for K J Choi to put some pressure on Mickelson at some point in the final round, but when the price on Mickelson drifted out past my lay price, I made the error of getting greedy and held out for more.

Another disaster was Carlton losing to Essendon, on Saturday but baseball seems to have turned around. One of the worries of a new season in any sport where you have a winning record is that the strategies you employ will no longer work, but although I am currently down after the first week, it's not by much and I think mostly down to a lack of liquidity which will improve when the NBA regular season winds down. I'm optimistic that there are profits ahead.

A weekend for looking back in many ways. This weekend a year ago, I dropped over £3,500 on the NBA, so the spreadsheet tomorrow will reflect a boost in the 365 day moving average, barring a disaster.

Twenty years ago this weekend was undoubtedly the greatest football moment of my life when Crystal Palace reached their first (to date) FA Cup Final after their never to be forgotten 4-3 win after extra-time versus Liverpool at Villa Park. It's hard to conjure up a scenario that would ever match that. Palace had never played a full 90 minutes at Wembley before, they had lost 9-0 to the same opponents earlier in the season, and the game itself had just about everything.

The Grand National this weekend was the 44th since the first one I remember was in 1967 when Foinavon won at 100-1 after turning around and taking another run at one of the fences. When your first Grand National was that one, it's kind of hard to beat, although the years of Red Rum, Crisp and Rag Trade were memorable, as was Aldaniti's win for Bob Champion.

I'm getting old.