The Benalla Bowls Club trailed Benalla Toyota by two points going into the final round of tipping in the Benalla Ensign competition.
Tipster Ian Hobson had a do-or-die plan to make up the points for the bowls club, and it had nothing to do with looking at the statistics.
“I was trying to work out on the last round because I needed a couple (of points more than Toyota), and you know what? I thought you might pick Geelong and Carlton,” Hobson said.
“I was in tipping at the bowls club, and I got 139 points (four fewer points than the Ensign competition); because I had to submit early in the week with this competition, I had to go with my gut.
“Then I would read this and that and then watch the telly and overthought it (in the bowls club tipping) and changed my tune.
“It was amazing how many people were following it.
“At the bowls club, there were people who obviously must have got the paper before me, and it was between you (Glenn Shaw) and me, and they said: ‘You know what? You’ve tipped two different this week.’”
The two tipsters predicted different results in the Geelong vs Western Bulldogs and Carlton vs GWS Giants games, as Hobson foresaw.
Everything went in the bowls club’s direction as the Cats fell to the Dogs and the Blues failed to beat the Giants, the bowls club drawing level with Benalla Toyota as the final game of the regular season came to a close.
The tipster for Toyota, Glenn Shaw, had a mantra for the season, but he did not follow it in the last round.
“I didn’t really pay an awful lot of attention, and all I learnt is that you can’t trust Carlton, ever,” Shaw said.
“I’m an Essendon fan, and I tipped against them most weeks, and I got them right, so I was right with them, but Carlton got me each week.
“The hard part was those split rounds when you’re tipping for the next round when the previous round wasn’t even finished. When you’re tipping on the Monday, and there’s a Tuesday game, the Anzac Day clash, to come.
“With Geelong, I was 50-50; I could have gone either way, but with the GWS-Carlton game, I thought going into finals and the in-form side (Carlton would win).
“After tipping, they lost (Patrick) Cripps, and what I suppose I didn’t look at was that it didn’t matter if they won or lost, so they probably took the round a bit easy.”
The two companies will share the prize of a $2000 Ensign advertising package.
In the public tipping competition, Jenny McKenna won with 144 points, and unlike the business tipsters, she did her research.
“I would read up on who was in form and who was injured each week,” McKenna said.
“My husband was in the tipping competition as well, so we would talk about it, but there was a bit of rivalry when we tipped differently.
“I followed it with great interest, and my condolences go to the runners-up because it was very tight at the top towards the end.
“There was a lot of luck involved, and supporting Collingwood each week really helped me out.”
McKenna won the $600 jackpot and is looking forward to spending the gift cards at a number of local businesses.
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