Beat the Spread

Betting on football is great. You know the drill…wake up late on a Saturday morning, stroll down for a cheeky fry-up then spend the next twenty minutes pouring over the Billy Hill Long List picking your accumulator…it’s bliss. Anyway, four Football League players have found themselves in hot water this week after allegedly betting against their own team, Accrington Stanley, to lose to Bury at the end of last season. It’s taken the FA ten months to assemble a crack-team of monkeys capable of blowing this case wide-open, and having spectacularly failed to do that, they’ve just bugged a couple of lamps and sent a patsy in ‘undercover.’ Regardless of how they assembled their evidence, word on the street is that this is the first time the FA has actually acted against players involved in betting on their own team to lose. Pretty low, eh lads? Four of those charged – Jay Harris, David Mannix, Robert Williams and Peter Cavanagh – were registered with Accrington Stanley at the time of the game (Harris and Cavanagh both actually played), while Andrew Mangan was registered with Bury.

All five are reported to have placed bets on Bury to win the match, which they did with a 2 – 0 victory. Mannix is alleged to have placed stakes of approximately £4,000; Mangan £3,500; Harris £2,000; Williams £1,000; and Cavanagh a big-spending £5 accumulator. Several high street bookies, including Billy Hill and Coral, stopped taking bets on the match after noting suspicious ­betting patterns involving rather “larger-than-normal” bets in specific parts of the country, including Liverpool. Reports at the time said £300,000 had been wagered compared to the typical average of £20,000 for a game of this somewhat dubious ‘stature.’ In order to place them above suspicion, the FA changed the officials and also sent an independent assessor to monitor the match.

Interestingly Harris, now registered with Chester City, has also been charged in relation to betting on a game involving his new club and another two League Two fixtures. Quite a tasty lad then, must have an expensive hobby or two if he’s so keen on making easy money. The heart says niche prostitute addiction, but my head says he’s got a problem with the drugs. Cavanagh has also been charged with further breaches in relation to betting on another Accrington Stanley match in which he played, and on a number of other League Two matches. Sounds like a real class act too.

The club issued this helpful statement yesterday: “Accrington Stanley are aware that two of our players have been charged by the Football Association in connection with betting on football matches. They have until later this month to respond to the charges, and we will wait until the Football Association reach a final verdict before any action is taken by the club.” Thanks for that guys, informative as ever.

No Hair on the Wicket

One of the best things about the internet is being able to make long-lasting friendships with people on the other side of the world. One of the worst things however is that these ‘friendships’ can often morph into sordid sexual role-plays, where young girls are manipulated into taking their shirts off by drunk, fat football fans. So just like a town centre Yates’ Wine Lodge on a Saturday night then. This week however, one particularly bad 41-year-old pervert has been jailed for posing as a teenager and luring young girls into stripping for him live over webcam. Paul Quinn, posing as 18-year-old Paul Wilson, somehow managed to convince one 15-year-old to take all her clothes off for him while he presumably sat in his own filth, cheeseburger in one hand, edging himself with the other.

You might justifiably ask if in its absence, has STT suddenly changed from a football blog to an amateur Crimewatch blog? No, is the unequivocal answer, because you see Mr Quinn was eventually caught by the polis after one girl identified him via a distinctive Celtic tattoo he reportedly always boasted about. Fiscal deputy Ward said: “On a number of occasions he asked her to remove her clothing. He did not show her who he was and having been repeatedly asked to do so, although she was very uncomfortable she did on one occasion do it (strip).”

Upon raiding his Midlothian home the filth found a huge haul of child pornography (more than 500 images of girls aged as young as six) on his computers, as well as a huge cache of hot video clips saved from the jailbaits’ webcams. Some of the files recovered were apparently rated at the highest level on the scale police use to measure depravity. Now I don’t know much about this but it sounds pretty fun, I’d hate to know where I might sit on this scale.

Quinn’s defence in court yesterday? He is simply “addicted” to the behaviour and needs help. Yeah fair enough mate.

Marry Mii! Or don’t.

Those regular readers will undoubtedly be familiar with the ever escalating love saga between ex-Liverpool nearly-man Jermaine Pennant and slutty topless model Amii Grove (the extra ‘i’ is for ‘interracial’). 2008 saw it peak and trough like a Shakespearean emotional rollercoaster, with Amii starting the year by kicking the “love rat” to the curb after the not-exactly-intelligent Pennant decided to cheat on her while being filmed by their house’s CCTV cameras. He spent the following ten or so months routing through her bins and just generally following her around until finally late in year he cornered her and proposed.

Now what many people don’t realise is that Page 3 girls are susceptible to that trick from Austin Powers, only if you ask them the same question three times they have to say ‘yes’, not tell the truth. How else do you think they end up being such ho-bags? Anyway, the rest as they say is history. Or is it???

Well no, because as quickly as this heavenly coupling solidified their love and commitment in a £38,000 diamond, it’s all over again. Amii has run away to presumably become a bottomless model, and Pennant has done the sensible male thing and just got back together with his ex-girlfriend, someone apparently famous called Jennifer Metcalfe. But when you’ve been adorned with a ring worth the best part of £40,000 what do you do if it all goes tits up? Embrace the modern age of course and sell it on eBay!

The 2.05 carat ring, which has received 13 bids up to a price of £20,502 at the time of writing, appears to have been posted by Amii herself. Not exactly the most eloquent prose, but she’s got great cans so we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt: “This is the engagement ring of Amii Grove, the ex fiance of a well known Premiership Football star. It is a beautiful ring, and was brought last November, and was worn for only a month and a half as the couple split on new year’s eve 2009. It is a real eye catching ring, with a large diamond in the centre of the ring, on the actual band it has small diamonds going all the 3 quarters of the way around the ring on the top bottom and middle. It is a beautiful ring. The Ring was valued at £38,000. A donation will be made to Brake charity which is the chsrity Amii Grove supports since losing her brother last july 2008 to a quad crash.”

You might justifiably ask why not just give the ring back to Jermaine? Well, word on the street is that he actually refused to accept it after using her Mercedes as part exchange for a new Ferrari. What a class act. Let’s be honest though, when you genuinely propose to your girlfriend in a graveyard, how else do you expect it to end?