It’s another top-class weekend of sport with Champions League and Heineken Cup finals and the first two Classics of the Irish Flat season. It also looks like being a scorcher so what, apart from a barbeque, a beer garden and a view of some short skirts, does JOE fancy?
First up we’re looking to racing and the first Classic of the Irish season, the 2000 Guineas from the Curragh on Saturday afternoon.
Aidan O’Brien provides six of the 13 declared runners, including the highly-rated Steinbeck, but Canford Cliffs is the favourite and, on the evidence of his third place in the English version three weeks ago, deserves to be.
On all known form, which also includes a six-length victory at the Coventry Stakes last summer, Richard Hannon’s colt is the best horse in the field and 11/4 looks a fair price. Cop a load of this if you want a more in-depth analysis of the race.
Next up, it’s the egg-chasers at the Stade de France where Toulouse take on Biarritz in an all-frog final. Toulouse are 1/3 favourites to lift the trophy for a fourth time and while JOE thinks they’ll come out on top, there’s no value in the straight win market. Instead, go for an 11-15 winning margin at 6/1. For more on the Heineken Cup final, read JOE’s preview here and don’t forget to check out the final tracker at JOE.ie/rugby from 5pm on Saturday.
For the third of this weekend’s serious fancies – you can read all about the crazier selections below – we’re looking at the next instalment and headline event of a star-studded Saturday, the Champions League final from the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid.
Jose Mourinho’s Inter are fancied to be too strong for Bayern Munich, for whom the suspension of Franck Ribery leaves the burden of expectation resting squarely on the shoulders of Arjen Robben.
Inter looked powerful against Barca in the semi-finals and provided that they can get close to that sort of form again, they should be too good for the German champions.
For betting purposes, the 5/4 about Inter doesn’t hold much appeal so we’ll look instead to the first goalscorer market.
Samuel Eto’o has scored just two Champions League goals since leaving Barcelona for the San Siro in last summer’s biggest transfer story but he’s a man for the big occasion, having already scored in two finals of this competition (in 2006 and again last year). He’s 6/1 to score first and that’ll do for us. Check out JOE’s exclusive interview with Jose Mourinho here, our in-depth preview of Inter-Bayern here, read more build-up in Football and don’t forget to join us for the Tracker, with wise-cracking wit Conor Heneghan, on Saturday night.
Break the bookie
This is the fun part of our weekend bets, where we try to combine three longshots that will have your bookie in a lather if they all click.
Look Busy won Haydock’s Temple Stakes last year and will be aiming to follow up in the same race on Saturday afternoon. This will be on very different ground (good to firm as opposed to the soft/heavy of 12 months ago) but he was an unlucky loser in a high class handicap at Chester last time and off bottom weight, could well go close at 16/1.
The first big game on a hectic Saturday sees Blackpool and Cardiff face off at Wembley for the right to be the whipping boys in the Premier League next season.
The Championship’s defences are bad at the best of times and the high-pressure occasion often leads to plenty of mistakes so there could be a few goals. Take in-form Blackpool to win 3-2 at 30/1.
Finally, JOE is partial to a few scorecasts (first scorer/correct score doubles) and we’ve one picked out for the Champions League final. At the risk of placing all our eggs in one Cameroon-striker-shaped basket, we’re going to go Samuel Eto’o again and a 2-0 Inter victory, which also pays 30/1.
Have a tenner on those three and you could pocket a cool €163,370.
