Jude Bellingham's 94th-minute wonder goal against Slovakia kept England's Euro hopes alive, sent the nation into pandemonium and secured one ITV Picks punter the first ever jackpot win.
Joanne Gordan, from Coventry, was sweating on the final leg of her ITV Picks.
Having successfully predicted the half-time score, the first goalscorer, the first player to be booked, the number of corners, the minute of the first goal and if there would be a penalty, she needed an England goal to vindicate her correct score prediction of 1-1 and complete the clean sweep.
Jude’s acrobatics kept Gareth Southgate’s job, England in the tournament and won Joanne £250,000.
Joanne’s full picks were:
- Half time score – England 0-1 Slovakia
- Full time score – England 1-1 Slovakia
- First goalscorer - Ivan Schranz
- First booking – Marc Guehi
- Number of corners - 9
- Penalty yes/no? – No
- Minute of first goal – 25th
Perhaps, most eye-catching is correctly predicting the exact minute off the opening goal.
Joanne said: “I don’t really know how to put it into words, it’s extremely surreal. You hear about people winning big amounts of money and you think, “good for them” you know, I’ll try and win myself and you never really consider that it might happen.
“My husband plays it as well, he’s the avid football watcher in my house with my son. He’s quite scientific about it, making notes about how they’re performing, and then says: “alright Jo, what are you picking?” and I say, “oh whatever, the 25th minute will do”.
Recounting how events unfolded, Joanne said: “We’d been out for a family party for my daughter’s birthday and when we got home the match was still playing. I was in the background and my husband was watching it and looking at my ITV Picks selections. He was screaming at the TV about the corners, because at that point the first goal time, the half time score and other bits and pieces had all matched up.
“And then it just went into a real kind of surreal, other-worldly kind of thing, we realised how important the Jude Bellingham goal was.
“And then we had to go out again. We thought at that point we had won, but we weren’t 100% sure, so as we were going out, I thought I’d just login on my phone and have a look and I saw the leaderboard, and my name, and the amount, and I said to myself “no, this isn’t real”.
“I said to Barry, my husband, “pull over”, he said “I can’t! I’m driving along the dual carriageway; I can’t pull over!”
“We were just coming up to a garage, so we pulled in and were both looking at it like, “this just isn’t real”, and he put it into words this morning, it was like the Only Fools and Horses sketch where they go to the auction house and they’re jumping around in the car, and that was precisely us, I mean anyone driving past must’ve thought, “what an earth is going on?”
“It still hasn’t really sunk in. It still feels not real.”
Safer gambling
We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.
Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.
