The Luck of the Irish?

This weekend sees the first legs of the World Cup Playoffs and the game im concentrating on is Ireland Vs France. It will be a very tight affair and the Irish will not fear the french one bit, Trappatoni has guided this irish team through qualifying group undeafeated with 4 wins and 6 draws and will face the French for a place in this summers World Cup. Ireland will fancy their chances over the two legs but I have a feeling that France will nick it (depsite having the handicap of Raymond Domenech as their manager!), Ireland often shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to the crunch.

For the purpose of this weekends game though im backing draw at 3.20 with Stan James, a great price! First legs are often tight gritty affairs and Ireland have proved already that they tend to draw alot of games with 6 out of the 10 games in qualifying draws. France will be also happy with a draw to take back for the 2nd leg so the odds of 3.20 at Stan James is good value. The other games I expect Russia to see off Slovenia and Portugal to beat Bosnia and a boring 0-0 between Greece and Ukraine, from a personal point of view I would love to see Ireland beat France just to see Michel Platini's reaction.

Backtracking to Wednesday night and the shocking performance from Rochdale against Luton in the FA Cup replay, apologies for those who followed my advice but if Rochdale would have converted one of the 50 million chances they had in the first half then we all would been laughing! Anyway onwards and upwards and lets hope for a tight tense draw in the Ireland V France game tomorrow!

Good Luck All!

Oh just to mention that David Beckhams LA Galaxy take on Houston I believe in MLS playoffs tonight and I will watching the game and will having a small 1-0 punt on the Galaxy.