STAR PREVIEW: Wales v Andorra

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]y nephew was telling me about his school sports day. Apparently, winning is no longer considered important – it’s the taking part that matters. EVERYONE who takes part gets a badge, no discrimination between coming first or last in the 100 metres !!

Everyone goes home happy and everyone’s a winner.

I feel the same way about the Euro 2016 Qualifiers which mercifully come to an end tonight. Even West Brom v Sunderland on Saturday is going to seem like punting heaven compared with some of the endless one sided encounters we’ve seen over the last couple of years – and yes, I REALLY do mean years.

The bottom line is everyone has qualified who was meant to under the new ‘improved’ (their words) structure which sees more teams in the hat and endless tedium to arrive at the same outcome.

Just like the school sports day, everyone goes home with a badge and everyone’s a winner. They’ve qualified, you’ve qualified, I’ve qualified ….. let’s just move on.

One of the final acts in this undramatic drama is Wales v Andorra tonight.

Wales have already qualified for their first major finals since the 1958 World Cup and Andorra are rooted to the bottom of Group B with nil points. With the pressure off, Wales will be fancied by many to go berserk tonight, scoring for fun, in what should prove a party atmosphere at the Cardiff City Stadium.

I’m less convinced there will be too many goals. Wales have scored two goals or fewer in their last 41 competitive matches and only scraped past Andorra 2-1 in the reverse fixture.

At this stage of the qualifiers, teams aren’t necessarily over-scoring. Just look at last night… Slovenia were amazingly held 0-0 by the perennial whipping boys San Marino at half-time before going on to ‘only’ win 2-0.

Plenty of focus will now be switching to the respective domestic action and at the odds and handicap lines kindly relayed by Trevor Harris at Star Sports I quite like the look of Andorra (words I never thought I’d write). Let me finish the sentence… I quite like the look of Andorra at 6/4 with a three goal start on the Star Sports handicap line.

RECOMMENDED BETS (scale of 1-50 points)

BACK ANDORRA (+3) for 5 points at around 6/4 with Star Sports

RETURN SINCE START OF WORLD CUP: PROFIT 161.90 POINTS

What’s your view? CALL STAR SPORTS 08000 521 321