Report: If You Think Coworker Who Went To The NFL Looks Rough This Morning, Spare A Thought For His PigBet Account

IMRAN GASHKORI | Sport Editor | Contact

Some guy that works in an office doing some bullshit email that doesn't really matter because he's wholly replaceable by some other over-educated human in a $400 suit is hurting this morning after spending the weekend caning himself in Melbourne.

While it wasn't a traditional Singapore-style lashing of the buttocks, it was Matthew Smith's spirit and soul that received the metaphorical slashes from the kendo stick of bad choices.

Because he works in the middle floors of a skyscraper in Betoota's financial district, in a mid-level law firm that does unglamorous contract grunt work that's ripe for replacement by the common robot, and he went to an outer-metro mid-level non-Catholic-but-Christian-adjacent private school that takes part in strange sports like field hockey and volleyball, follows American football where he confidently knows the rules, Smith has a crippling gambling addiction that nobody really knows about.

Colleagues have said Smith looks very tired after his weekend watching the gridiron in Melbourne, but they don't know the true wellspring of his misery.

Yes, his liver looks like a butcher's bin that's been left out in the sun all week. Yes, he looks like he's woken up in the morgue. Yes, he smells a bit like urine. All of those things point to a time well had, if you're into that thing. He didn't get on the bags because he doesn't know how to get them. If someone presented some before him, on a piss-soaked toilet paper dispenser in a Melbourne pub after the game, he would've let out his best Jackie Chan 'Waaaaaaaah!', struck a pose, then hoovered the whole line up one nostril, as is tradition in his culture.

But a layer on top of that utter depletion is his financial situation. He's overdrawn, he's put a month's pay's worth of savings through PigBet. Now PigBet has offered him counselling and the chance to win it all back at Sha Tin tonight.

Smith refused to speak to our reporter in the line for coffee this morning, downstairs at the shared cafe we have in our building. And fair enough.

More to come.