Who is the pools panel

The former Albion Rovers, Blackpool, Newcastle and Scotland player was only 25 when an injury ended his career. He ripped the cartilage and ligaments in his right knee and his recuperation was not helped by the club insisting he continued training in a splint, running up and down the terraces at St. He has been on the pools panel since The pools go back much longer than that. They were were launched nearly a century ago, in , when the only legal way to bet on sport was through a bookmakers at a racecourse.

Three points were awarded for each score draw, two points for a scoreless draw and only one point if the match was won. At their height in the s, around 14 million people played the pools every week, but the launch of the National Lottery in dented their popularity dramatically.

As many of the people who took part in the pools had little interest in football, simply choosing their numbers randomly, the lottery provided a more accessible way of winning life-changing sums of money. For those who selected games on the basis of their football knowledge, online betting dealt another major blow to the fortunes of the three main pools companies: Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters. The pools have tried to change with the times, going online and developing more sophisticated games, but only , people now play regularly.

The pools have survived various bumps in the road — including one that led to the establishment of the pools panel. When hundreds of games were called off during the Big Freeze in the season, pools companies faced the prospect of losing business so decided to introduce a panel of experts who would forecast how the games would have finished had they been played. What are the pros and cons of the shot without spin?

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In which sports do bookmakers bet In-running betting? There were 11 games on 16 February, then 24 on 23 February — the most since the fog came down on 22 December, and the first day the new Pools Panel wasn't required. On 16 March the first full league card since mid-December was played. Well Bill, it's not quite true, but it is closer to reality than you might imagine and again involves that bitter winter of Blackpool suffered more than most as their pitch completely froze over to the point where they couldn't play a single home game between 15 December and 2 March.

Some players even took to ice skating on the pitch, as revealed by the following gem, dug out of the West Lancashire Evening Gazette's archives by Seasiders historian Gerry Wolstenholme:. On 29 January Blackpool used a disc harrow to try to get the game against West Ham United played on 2 February but that too proved ineffective and on 30 January the players swept a heavy fall of snow from the pitch in a vain hope that it would be clear underneath, but the ice — one to four inches thick — was 'as formidable as ever'.

But it was actually Norwich who attempted, unsuccessfully, to defrost their playing surface with fire. Their scheduled FA Cup third-round tie at home to Blackpool had been postponed 11 times, and, as the same piece of archive reveals, they were willing to try just about anything by the end. However they 'served no purpose whatsoever' for 'as fast as the ice melted it froze again'.

An icebreaker was also used but it too proved ineffective. Again, the year was , and England and Wales were experiencing their coldest winter since Scotland, incidentally, was suffering its worst since Indeed, the winter was so severe that Barnsley managed only two games from 21 December to 12 March. Up the road in Halifax, they hit upon an enterprising idea: why not use the Shay stadium for ice skating?

Ironically, it happened on 2 March when — as the Manchester Guardian booklet "The Long Winter " reports — most of the country was, at long last, experiencing a thaw. With only 14 Football League matches postponed, soccer had its best day for 11 weeks.

There was still no football at Halifax, but the local club opened its ground as a public ice rink and hundreds skated on it. The stunt pulled in a few pennies, but it didn't do Halifax any good — they scraped only 30 points all season and were relegated to the Fourth Division, along with Carlisle, Brighton and Bradford Park Avenue.