Green machine in need of oil

June 4th, 2009 by Kevin Egan

Last week, this column made reference to what we call “The Jersey Test”. The idea is very simple; when assessing teams, it’s no harm to remove any of the allure or stigma that is associated with a particular team and see if that affects your reading of the game. Meath footballers are the perfect example of just such a team. Over the years they have beaten, battered and bruised so many teams into submission that the mere uttering of their name evokes an automatic level of respect.

Another aspect of this tradition is their long history of getting crucial, timely and quality goals. This Meath team have scored goals when they’ve needed to, they’ve scored goals in order to bury teams out of sight and they’ve had some of the great goalscorers of the game line out in their colours.

Colm O’Rourke, Bernard Flynn, Graham Geraghty and Ollie Murphy are four names who would be in contention if one were to have a contest for the greatest goalscorer of the last twenty five years and it’s fair to say that no county has had such an obvious wealth of outstanding inside forwards in that time.

This of course leads us to our key point – if you have a reputation for getting up early, you can stay in bed all day. So it is with this Meath team – people fear them, but ultimately it’s for no good reason other than what Meath teams and players in the past have achieved. People expect them to score goals, but the truth is that this Meath team aren’t scoring goals. Joe Sheridan, Stephen Bray and Cian Ward are all fine forwards who pose a threat to any opponent, however their strike rate in the league was shocking and there is no obvious reason why that should change dramatically on Sunday.

In seven games in this year’s league campaign Meath scored two goals – one against Laois in an awful night for football and one against Kildare in a 2-9 to 1-12 draw. Granted Dublin were far from prolific with the green flags either, save for their rout of Westmeath, but that was against Division one defences and with a couple of their key players absent due to commitments with Kilmacud Crokes.

Dublin should win this game either way and they represent a good bet at the match odds of 1/2, however if they are to lose this game, it will most likely be because they started to wobble towards the end and their psychological weaknesses came into play. It is highly likely that they will start better than Meath and it is also very likely that they will be the first team to score a goal. 4/5 about Dublin to score the first goal is a very fair price and is worth a 2pt bet.

Sticking with the goals markets, under 1.5 goals in the Clare vs Limerick match looks a little overpriced as well at even money, as it’s difficult to see either of these teams scoring freely. This is likely to be a very hard fought local derby with any forward having the temerity to bear down on goal likely to pay for his sins. Having said that, both sides have had weak performances in their full back line so while a low scoring game is highly likely, that still does not preclude a 1-7 to 1-5 thriller. On those grounds we will stop short of recommending a bet here despite the gut feeling that the price is a touch generous, instead holding fire until a total points market may become available closer to the time and looking to play low on this instead.

Tags: Dublin, Goals, Jersey test, Meath