Five Betway Premiership matches went in on Saturday and the one everybody wanted was the one our fans read best.
Nine Prediz fans predicted Orlando Pirates against Kaizer Chiefs. Five of them had the home win. Only Kamogelo had it at 2-1, which is how it finished. The most common prediction was 1-1, from two fans, and that fence-sitting is understandable in a derby but it does not pay on this platform. Pirates now have 25 points from nine, a goal difference of plus 19, and they sit top.
The rest of the afternoon was harder. Milford beat Sekhukhune 1-0, and four of the nine fans who went in had predicted a 1-2 away win. Three fans still got the result right, nobody got the score. Milford are fourth on 18 points from ten games, which is a long way further up the table than most people had them.
The genuine ambush was in Stellenbosch. Nine fans predicted it, four of them called a 2-0 Stellenbosch win, and it finished 0-2 to Chippa United. Not one fan got the result, never mind the score. That is the cleanest wipeout we have had all season: the most popular prediction was the actual scoreline with the teams swapped.
AmaZulu beat Golden Arrows 1-0 and gave us the only other exact scores of the day. Siphamandla and Lwandle both had it. The crowd had gone 0-0, two fans deep, which was the second most common call turning into a near miss. AmaZulu are third on 22 points, three behind Pirates and one behind Mamelodi Sundowns, and they are not going away.
Polokwane City and TS Galaxy drew 0-0, with two of seven fans getting the result off a 1-1 prediction and nobody on the scoreline.
So across five matches, 41 predictions and three exact scores. The lesson from Saturday is that the derby was the readable one and the mid-table fixtures were not. Before Wednesday, look hard at Chippa. Four fans wrote them off and they won by two, and they are out again on Wednesday night against a Sekhukhune side who have now lost at Milford.