RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29932, 20 September 1962, Page 21

RANDOM REMINDER

PROPHET AND LOSS

Any sort of sporting event—save, perhaps, Australia’s challenge for the America's Cup—is likely to induce New Zealanders to bet on the result. If they can not find anyone willing to accept a wager, they will organise an office sweepstake, in which the sum of the entry fees seldom coincides properly with the number of entrants. When Canterbury went to Auckland last week to play for the Ranfurly Shield, there was a positive rash of sweepstakes in shops and offices. And from this welter of speculation arose one sad story of undeniable hard luck. The man concerned is thorough in all he does, and he seldom bets. So when he was induced to take part in a competition to predict the score, there was no blind guesswork for Him. He went into ‘he whole thing carefully. He studied first the records of the two teams, and, after watching attentively for

several evenings, a flight of birds told him that Auckland would win. His horoscope checked this for him. The Meteorological Survey gave him some valuable information about the probability of rain and wind on the Saturday, and he consulted the Turf Research Institute and some well-known agronomists about the likely condition of the ground and the grass, the poracity of the soil. Then Eric, or Little by Little, sought information from the New Plymouth Boys’ High School on the early lives of the rival captains, the brothers Graham, to see whether the headmaster of the day, or the careers adviser, could help him establish whether one was likely to surpass the other in stamina or guile, and thus contribute to a reduction or expansion in Auckland’s winning margin. After a quick look at his crystal ball (family economy size) and a

glance at the tide tables, he discovered from the police the likely size of the crowd, and from the Health Department the proportion of it likely to be smoking, and thus affecting the density of the atmosphere. All this information, and more, he assembled by means of a somewhat complicated formula, which he transferred, behind locked doors, to a couple of graph curves. Their coincidence showed quite clearly that the final score would be 22-6 Now as everyone knows, the score was actually 15 to 6; the figures may be found engraved on some Victory Park Board hearts. Our friend was disappointed, but was able to point to the fact that three Auckland kicks value, seven points, missed by minute margins. He blames the whole thing on the failure of the Auckland Rugby Union to provide him with sufficiently accurate information about the air pressure in the balls.