NRL's Friday double header featured intense matches, but betting irregularities arose from player selection rumors.
Last week the NRL world was beside itself after a Friday night double header that promised a night of high intensity and finals quality football and completely delivered. The Panthers and the Raiders battled it out into golden point extra time, where we saw an extraordinary finish. The Bulldogs looked on their way to a convincing loss at halftime, before fighting back against the Storm and almost grabbing them on the line.
However. The Panthers had other ideas. The first sign that something was amiss came on Monday when an assortment of gambling agencies started reporting suspicious plunges on the Bulldogs at the originally posted price of $2.30 for the win. That price started to tumble once rumours spread that the Panthers were going to rest players. It plummeted to $1.08 once the official teams came out on Tuesday afternoon, with the Panthers naming 16 players who weren't in last week's 17-man squad. The gambling agencies had been stung, as information leaked out across the rugby league world.