No need for winners if fast starters can be found
Right now, miserable as the conditions outside might be, it’s a safe bet that as many as 30% of the country’s intercounty footballers and hurlers will be going out training tonight. 30% more will have gone out training last night and 30% will go out tomorrow night, and as for the other 10%, well they’re just better at coming up with plausible excuses. And despite the miserable conditions, any player will tell you the same thing – it’s all in pursuit of the extra few inches, the extra ounce of strength, the tiniest margins that they hope will be the difference between possession won and possession lost at some crucial time in the summer.
So it is with the betting game, and trying to call winning bets. Over time, the tiniest of inches can make all the difference – and one of the trickiest aspects can be correctly estimating how strong each team is going to be, given that different teams are running very different training schedules.
Managers constantly speak about their attempts to “peak” at different times, largely dependent on the goals of that county. Some counties are so starved of success that they’ll hit their top gear relatively early, hoping to secure the few crucial league wins that will push them on from a low base. Others will gear everything towards making a good run in their provincial championship, while the elite few will gear their training to hit full speed round about the August bank holiday. Whether they get there via the front or back door is never the issue, instead the focus is simply on getting to that stage and finding a new tempo from then on.
Of course none of this changes the classic betting maxim that a winner is a winner, and an even money shot that comes home is just as good if it’s in the O’Byrne Cup as it is in the All Ireland football final.
As a result, it’s well worth having a look and factoring in the effect of teams aiming to peak earlier as opposed to later in the season. For the purposes of this, we took the four counties who are widely acknowledged to be in the best position in terms of aiming to peak late, those being Mayo, Galway, Cork and Kerry. These four counties can usually presume that even firing at 50% capacity, they’ll reach their provincial final and thus they can safely train so as to optimise their chances of winning an All Ireland, as opposed to prolonging survival. In the past three seasons, these counties have won 60% of their games in the NFL – but yet in that same three years, they only won five of their eleven first round fixtures. (Four of nine against other teams – Mayo beat Kerry in round one in 2007). Also, note that the reason there was eleven rather than twelve fixtures was because Cork did not play the opening round in 2008 on account of their strike.
Albeit in a small sample, the big guns did not overachieve in the early rounds, though in fairness this trend continues the whole way back to the reformation of the league in 2002.
Now we look at the other side of the coin – counties preparing for an Ulster championship campaign, widely recognised as the most treacherous of all the provincial routes. Even the best of teams can come a cropper in Ulster early on, meaning that they could get dumped into do or die qualifiers at a very early stage. The nine Ulster counties have had a 51% strike rate in the NFL in the last three seasons, however in 25 first round matches (Fermanagh missed two opening round games) they recorded 16 wins, a strike rate of 64%. Two wins and two defeats in that 16-9 record came in games against each other.
Again, albeit on not much data, the finding is clear. Those counties who have to be at their best in May or early June are in a lot better shape in early February and can be expected to overachieve, while those counties who are training with September in mind are unlikely to meet expectations and can be opposed in the reasonable hope of finding value.
Just like the players, this pre-season is all about finding inches where we can – the coming weeks will tell if there are a few to be found in assessing which teams are geared to hit their full pelt at the earliest possible time.
Tags: NFL
Categories: Gaelic Football
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Comments (2)
“with the exception of Roscommon who don’t look capable of beating even the Roscommon Juniors”. Is this the same Roscommon that you tipped late last year to win the All-Ireland in 2010 @ 250/1 each way?
Sadly it is, though the price was 500/1 at the time – however I certainly didn’t expect the Rossies to deteriorate as severely as they have. Don’t forget though, that was a trading bet – I still think Roscommon will reach a Connacht final, which gives them two chances to get into a last eight. As a very young team, they’ll also improve for the summer conditions – though I accept that right now they are going the wrong direction in a hurry.