Posts Tagged ‘Armagh’
Due to the unique backdoor system where only provincial final losers get a second chance, the line up for the All Ireland minor championship quarter finals had been finalised well before the last of the provincial finals at the weekend. Nonetheless the deciders in Ulster and Connacht were still extremely interesting from the point of view of assessing where the value lies in the outright market to lift the Tom Markham Cup. The Northern and Western provinces have enjoyed a great record in recent years at minor level and the past three deciders have featured one team from each province, and the early indications are that this form should continue again this year.
The form of Connacht football at adult level has taken a battering this year with Galway and Mayo performing so poorly, but the old rivals took part in an excellent minor decider on Sunday, with Mayo winning out due to a couple of outstanding goals. Connacht teams have featured in the last five All Ireland minor deciders, but it must surely rankle with Mayo that while Galway and Roscommon each took their chances beating Derry and Kerry in 2007 and 2006 respectively, Mayo lost all three of their opportunities in 2005, 2008 and last year and are still waiting since 1985 for their seventh title at this grade.
Concluding our series of looks at the All Ireland football championship, all that remains is to assess the “outsiders” and to see if a long shot winner is a possibility, and where the value might lie if one were to try and find a Hail Mary or two. As a rule, the All Ireland football championship is not noted for big priced winners and one would have to go back a long way to find a team that would have started the championship at 33/1 or bigger and went on to secure the crown.
Galwegians would probably point to their triumph in 1998 as a dark horse success, but even so, odds of 20/1 would have been the height of those offered. After all, they were after reaching the quarter finals of the national league having scored 1-15 per game in the round robin stages and even though they had to travel to Castlebar to play Mayo for their opening tie, that day was the only time they would have been considered real outsiders until the final. For a real surprise winner of the All Ireland, you would have to go back to Down in 1991 and before that, probably Louth in 1957.
Despite suggestions that some of the national league finals would take place at provincial locations around the country, it’s encouraging to see that all four games are being held in Croke Park this weekend. From the point of view of attendance, it’s somewhat disappointing that the games weren’t arranged differently (for example, by putting all three Ulster competitors on one day and having the three Munster teams on another and thus maximising local interest) but the important aspect is that the eight panels of players who worked so hard are rewarded with a day out in headquarters.
Usually by the end of round three, the betting for the National Football Leagues begins to look a lot simpler. In most divisions, as many as three or four counties would normally be out of the running by now, but unusually this season, very few counties are out of contention while equally, very few are still safe from the drop – notwithstanding those counties playing division four football.
Taking a helicopter view and looking down at division one first, Cork head the betting at 11/10, but this column can only speculate that there must have been plenty of money laid down on the Munster champions because this is a very short price, factoring in the football we’ve seen so far. They scraped home against Monaghan, beat a Kerry team that was very much in pre-season mode and very nearly let a huge lead slip against Galway last Saturday night on their home turf. Cork undoubtedly have ample quality, but Conor Counihan and most of the Cork supporters will know that to even win this league, much more will be required in the coming weeks.
A big weekend looms for eight of the nine teams remaining in the senior football championship, but to the six teams set to go to post in the three minor football quarter finals, this weekend is no less significant. The meeting of Down and Dublin has been postponed due to a virus scare in the Down camp, however the three other ties go ahead, with the provincial champions heavily favoured by the compilers in each case.
Kerry minors will be particularly looking forward to this fixture as they get to play in Croke Park on Sunday morning in front of a healthy Kerry crowd as the curtain raiser to their county’s senior match. While Kerry’s recent minor record has been underwhelming when set alongside their achievements at senior level and normally they would be a county to oppose at odds on against decent opposition, Roscommon simply don’t have sufficient form in the book to justify any such position in this fixture.
As any tipster who has attempted to call winners on the first weekend of the qualifiers will tell you, the upcoming round of fixtures in the All Ireland championship has the potential to make any pundit look very foolish. Unlike the provincial championships, or even the national league, the qualifiers are capable of throwing up some very surprising results and indeed some incredibly one-sided fixtures. These occur when two counties meet that have completely different attitudes to the backdoor system and unfortunately for the punter, it is often too difficult to tell these attitudes in advance.
Any recommendation is fraught with inherent danger since it is rarely in the public domain which counties are revelling in their second opportunity and which counties’ players have completely lost interest and are marking time until they can go back to their clubs.
We’re all told that stereotyping is a negative trait to be avoided at all costs, yet sometimes it’s just too hard to avoid. Ulster football is just one of those situations. Honestly, if two red headed Irish lads landed into Piccadilly Circus in London wearing green clothes and drunk on whiskey and started beating each other up with shillelaghs while singing about the Famine, it wouldn’t be any more of a ridiculous parody of a famous stereotype than what went on in Celtic Park last Sunday – except that what we saw on TV was no parody, but simply Ulster football at it’s grim and gruesome best.
The last round of the national football league invariably throws up three different types of fixtures. There are the games where both teams have something to play for – Cork vs Armagh being one of the more obvious examples – the games where one team is still competing while the other is already thinking of the championship, and the games where both sides have their league fate decided and starting places for the championship are the main talking point.
2009 may yet turn out to be a year of surprises or a year of the same old guard, but we can be very sure after last Sunday that if any county does manage to topple a big gun this summer, they’ll have to do it the hard way. Tyrone, Kerry, Armagh and Dublin have been the leading lights in the football championship for the past decade and right now all four appear to be in very good health, some would say surprisingly so for the time of year.
