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18th June 2014
03:21pm BST
What happens when you ask 20 sports journos to enter a World Cup betting competition? Well, a lot of bad calls is what you actually get. Our good friends at Ladbrokes are sponsoring a World Cup Naps Media Betting competition for the duration of the Brazil tournament and after the first round, the results are in.
The games the entrants were asked to notionally bet on over the weekend were two tough ones to call, England v Italy and Germany v Portugal.
Only two men, Owen Cowzer of The Sun and The Mirror's Michael Scully, were successful in both games. Owen had over 2.5 goals in the England game and a win for Germany in the second. Michael had a win for Italy and a win for Germany. That puts Owen on a very healthy €50.50 profit, just ahead of Michael's tally of €48.50, but it wasn't enough for the early lead.
That honour goes to Off The Ball's Colm Parkinson. Woolly hit the bar in the first game, predicting a 1-1 draw but he struck solid gold with his pick of Thomas Muller to score first in the Germany game. That bet, at odds of 6/1, sees the Laois man sit proudly atop the table after the first phase. Question is will he, like his beloved Everton, fall away near the end of the campaign and miss out on the prize? Time will tell.
Of the 20 punts on the Italy game, only one other writer had a success, with Scully predicting an Italy win in Manaus. All the others went wrong, with the vast majority picking a draw, a result that Mario Balotelli made sure didn't happen. What that says about the collective nous of the press we will leave unsaid.
The Germany game was a much better day for the hacks, with almost half of the bets coming in, including those of our two entrants, Sean Nolan and Eric Lalor. Germany's destruction of Portugal proved very popular in newsrooms around the country, but with the odds at just under evens, 19/20, the return wasn't all that substantial.
All that leaves Woolly comfortably ahead at this stage, setting the sort of pace that would make even fast-starting Holland blush. Can he be caught or will he ultimately pocket the cash and head off to the sun? We already know he has all the gear.
The next game on the cards is another tricky one, Italy's crucial clash with Uruguay on June 24.
| Contestant | Running Total* |
| Colm Parkinson - Newstalk | €60.00 |
| Owen Cowzer - Sun | €50.50 |
| Michael Scully - Mirror | €48.50 |
| Paul Lennon - Star | €11.50 |
| David Courtney - Indo | €11.50 |
| Adrian Russell - Score.ie | €11.50 |
| Sean Nolan - JOE.ie | €11.50 |
| Eric Lalor - JOE.ie | €11.50 |
| Gareth Makim - Metro | €11.00 |
| Stephen Beacom - Bel Tel | -€20.00 |
| Paul O'Hehir - Mirror | -€20.00 |
| Eoin Brannigan - Star | -€20.00 |
| Dave Coughlan - Star | -€20.00 |
| Kieran Holden - TV3 | -€20.00 |
| Jim Gracey - Bel Tel | -€20.00 |
| Aidan Fitzmaurice - Herald | -€20.00 |
| Brian Flanagan - Star | -€20.00 |
| Dave McIntyre - Newstalk | -€20.00 |
| Mick McCarthy - Newstalk | -€20.00 |
| Nathan Murphy - Newstalk | -€20.00 |
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