£1m placed in bets as team walks out (From Bournemouth Echo)

£1m placed in bets as team walks out

8:00am Monday 23rd February 2009

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AROUND £1 million is believed to have changed hands as punters placed massive bets on non-league football club Weymouth losing a match at the weekend.

With Weymouth forced to field a side made up almost entirely of youth team players, punters began to wager large amounts on Rushden and Diamonds winning.

More than £680,000 was traded on a Rushden victory on the Betfair exchange alone.

Bookmakers took hundreds of thousands more in bets in high street shops and online ahead of the 9-0 defeat for Weymouth. Some bookmakers suspended betting.

A spokesman for Coral Bookmakers said the incident had “rocked the industry” as unprecedented amounts were wagered on a non-league game.

The price of a Rushden victory tumbled from an early 15-8 to 5-4 on Friday night and was down to 4-6 by kick-off.

One punter claimed that he and his friends won tens of thousands of pounds.

He said: “As soon as word began leaking out on Friday night that it might be the entire youth team playing, we began putting on bets.

“We put on money at all the local bookmakers and then started driving to all the surrounding towns to get more bets on.

“We then began ringing friends around the country to get them to put on money for us. Even as the price began shortening we kept putting on thousands because there was no way a team of 17-year-olds were going to win that game.”

Terras fan Keith Avant, 30, said he had placed £100 on Rushden although he found it difficult to bet against his team.

He said: “I put £100 on and got £237 back.

“I heard all the players were walking away so I went out to make the bet.

“It was a bit emotional as a Terras fan as you don’t want to bet against your own team. But it was a good investment.”

Weymouth’s senior players refused to play on Saturday amid fears that their private medical insurance had lapsed and today their 14-day payment notice expires, leaving them free to walk away.

Simon Clare, PR director for Coral, said: “Normally £30,000-40,000 would be paid on a match like this across the whole industry but we paid out in the region of £100,000 and we are 20 per cent of the industry.”

“We took evasive action and made price changes to the match when we heard there was public knowledge that players were not available.

“We are very alert to those sorts of things to protect ourselves.”

Steve Palmer, deputy sports editor at the Racing Post, described the match as “the centre of the betting universe” before the game.

He said: “Non-league football is one of the few sports where punters can get an edge on the bookmakers.

“They can have superior knowledge and the bookmakers can get caught with their trousers down.”

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