Non-League Football Betting, Strategy, Hints & Tips
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Conference Betting
Betting on non-league football is difficult. Bad pitches, referees and players can make for results that regularly leave you scratching your head. The further down the leagues you go, consistency in players ability drops exponentially. There are players in the conference who have the ability to play at a much higher level, but an inability (or in some cases, unwillingness) to show this talent on a regular enough basis means they are playing where they are. Add in refereeing which is at best inconsistent, and you get teams who beat the top of the table side on a Saturday and lose against the bottom side on a Wednesday.
Having said this, with some intelligence and work, there is money to be made from non-league football. With the increased Setanta coverage of the conference it is now possible to see the matches and the teams too, giving you much more information and access to markets that you might not even get in leagues above.
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Information
You can gain an edge over the bookmakers with information. Bookies are compiling odds for an ever increasing range of markets further and further down the football pyramid, and there is no way they can afford to research every game as thoroughly as you can. Information at this level is patchy, ranging from the professional websites and forums of the former league clubs, to the updated once a year website and one bloke posting to himself on a forum that you get with some of the part time teams. If you can find information on teams that are struck by injuries, suspensions, work commitments etc, especially the lower the level you are looking at, you can have some confidence that the bookmakers have not taken these facts into account, giving you an edge.
Home Favourites
With the significant variations in resources available to the various clubs in the Conference, and especially considering there are a number of part time clubs* mixed in with full time former league clubs, it becomes easy to convince yourself of the merits of backing short priced favourites in this league.
In the last three seasons there have been 104 games in which bet365 have offered odds of 1.5 or less on the home team.
- If you were blanket betting all these games at these odds you would need a strike rate of significantly more than 66% to profit.
- However, in those 104 games the home team only actually won on 61 occasions, yielding -£18 for a £1 level stake.
Now, this isnt a big enough sample to be truly representative, but the cautionary note is that if you are looking at hot home favourites, be careful. Never follow short prices blindly, in particular a short priced home team missing their top goalscorer are not nearly as attractive a proposition as teams down in this league will not have infinite pool of players with goalscoring ability. Look out for teams missing their number 1 goalkeeper - never a good sign at this level. Although it is difficult to justify at prices of 1.5 below, always consider covering with 0-0 and/or 1-1 scorelines, which was the scoreline in 21 of the 43 games where the favourite failed to win.
* (these are ever decreasing, and some teams contain a mix of part time and full time players) Join the party in February 2009 - It's Brazil Carnival time...
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Live Games
If you have a live betting game between two reasonably matched teams who can score goals there is a good theoretical case for using the lay the draw system. There are two reasons for this:
1. Draws are statistically less likely in the conference than other English leagues, averaging around 26% over the last couple of seasons.
2. Average goals in the Conference is usually higher than in other English leagues, around 2.7/game last season up from 2.55/game the year before.
