Taking  deeper look now at the meeting of Kerry and Mayo this Sunday, and of all the subsidiary markets offered by Ladbrokes on this game, their total points line of 32.5 looks the most unusual.

Unlike most sports, where “defence wins games, attackers determine by how much”, in Gaelic football, it’s the forward men that are the difference makers. Backs are easy to mould and manage, but a forward who can be depended on to score two or three points from play even on a bad day is a treasure, and certainly Kerry have plenty of these players.

The difference with Kerry however is that they don’t get scores from the backline to the same extent and all of their scoring is concentrated in that group of players who have that responsibility. Bryan Sheehan scores as much as most forwards, but generally speaking the team depends on the front men to keep the scoreboard ticking over, unlike other teams that usually see their backline chip in with two or three scores.

What this in turn means is that Kerry don’t concede many scores because they don’t allow themselves to be caught out of position, while at the other end players like Colm Cooper, Darren O’Sullivan, Declan O’Sullivan and Bryan Sheehan all score well, compensating for the fact that there isn’t a lot coming from anywhere else.

Mayo certainly don’t score freely, even in games where things go well for them, such as their Connacht semi final win over Galway. Their defensive set up is strong, and any team that registers 16 points against them will have earned it.

So why 32.5 as the best guess at a total, in the eyes of the bookmakers? The stellar Kerry attack must be respected, but they aren’t a free scoring group either, and against Limerick, when they won well, they did so largely due to keeping the Treaty men to ten points. They barely would have covered 32.5 in a cakewalk of a fixture, which suggests the line is hardly appropriate for playing against a very disciplined and measured Mayo defence.

Perhaps it’s the fear of an imminent Mayo collapse, however James Horan lost an All Ireland final due to his team letting Kerry get too far in front to be reeled in. The message of uncompromising defending and keeping the Munster champions in sight will be heeded. Expect a defensive display here, and a long way short of 32.5 points as the final match tally.

Somewhat poetically, the team of Cats threw one of their own into the pigeons with an outstanding performance against Dublin, a result that has rocked the bookmakers back on their heels in terms of the betting to lift the Liam McCarthy Cup.

The accepted wisdom coming into this match was that Tipperary were comfortably the front runners, with Kilkenny in second and Dublin coming like a train as the live outsiders. All of a sudden, Dublin are now back in the middle of the chasing pack with a lot of questions to answer, while Kilkenny have essentially stared Tipperary in the eye and issued them with a challenge – top that if you can.

Ladbrokes’ assessment is that the All Ireland champions remain the top dogs by the narrowest of margins, offering them at 6/5, while Kilkenny are now 5/4. Even to a number cruncher like yours truly, it’s almost academic the difference, but it does invite the question – are Tipperary still in front?

Possession remains nine tenths of the law, and until somebody takes it away from them, the Liam McCarthy cup resides in the Premier County. Of course that counts for a lot – but the Kilkenny team that Tipperary beat by eight points in last year’s final hurled without Henry Shefflin for the vast majority of that match, and anyone watching last Sunday could be under no illusions about the value of the Ballyhale star to this team.

His final tally of 1-9 was of course important, but more important was the headache that he caused the Dublin defence and management who had to counteract his influence, the space he creates for those around him and the inspirational value of some of the scores that he converts.

In addition to all this, he is a natural leader. Midway through the first half he tracked back when Dublin were in possession and put great pressure on Conor McCormack, causing the young forward to skew a scoring chance wide left. Shefflin does his share of donkey work, but still has the energy and the ability to let his talent shine through, and that alone changes the landscape from 2010.

Paul Murphy’s performance in the full back line was another very encouraging aspect to Sunday’s match for Brian Cody, while Colin Fennelly showed real killer instinct to take his first half goal and he could yet be the natural replacement for Eddie Brennan. Fennelly’s influence was greatly reduced when Niall Corcoran was switched over to mark him, but even so he did enough to suggest that he’s worth his place in that attack.

Tommy Walsh was also at his imperious best, though marking Noel McGrath will be another matter entirely. Dublin’s half forward line was simply not at the races yesterday and while Conal Keaney was good when on the ball,  there was nobody stepping up and taking control of Gary Maguire’s puckouts. The absence of Ryan O’Dwyer here was absolutely crucial and as a result we’ll lay the praise on the shoulders of the Kilkenny half back line a little more gently and with some circumspection. They did what they had to do, and always looked assured doing it. Much greater challenges loom on the horizon however.

One thing which can be predicted with certainty is that if things pan out as expected and Tipperary meet Kilkenny in the 2011 All Ireland final, there is no chance that Declan Ryan will concede the full forward line as readily as Anthony Daly did last Sunday. Paul Ryan and David O’Callaghan simply didn’t have the ability to win ball against two man markers each and the absence of a genuine goal threat in the Dublin forward line was a huge problem.

Daire Plunkett did threaten to cause some problems with his pace and it was understandable that Anthony Daly would look to create space for Plunkett to attack, however too often in the second half we saw Conal Keaney picking up possession around the middle third of the field and trying to play a pinpoint pass into one corner or the other in an attempt to get the ball into the hands of O’Callaghan or Ryan. Kilkenny knew that there was little or no risk to them in conceding that type of possession and regularly the Dublin forwards failed to convert possession into scores.

Against Tipperary, Kilkenny will be in danger of conceding goals, and that by itself will lead to a very different type of game. Add in Tipperary’s ball winning ability in the half forward line and a much more settled full back line, and clearly the Cats will have a lot more on their plate. Enough to justify still only being second favourites? Probably, but one way or another there really is little or nothing between the two sides.

The final element to be factored in is how the draw is shaping up and which side is more likely to slip up between now and the final. If Waterford pull off an upset against Tipperary this Sunday then the prospect of a Kilkenny vs Tipperary showdown in the All Ireland semi final becomes very real. If not, then Tipperary will have to take on either Dublin or Limerick, while Kilkenny will have the marginally tougher assignment (on paper at least) of meeting the winners of Cork, Galway and Waterford. Again, enough to justify second favouritism, but not by a big margin.

With no championship meeting having taken place between Cork and Dublin for the last fifteen years, a look back at their most recent encounter should, on the face of it, offer little by way of insight into Sunday’s game. From a playing perspective, that 1995 All Ireland semi final was utterly irrelevant, but nonetheless the parallels between that meeting and the semi-final this Sunday are intriguing.

Cork had slowly become the dominant team in Munster back then, but failed to put an All Ireland title on the board, most notably failing to justify favouritism against Derry in 1993. Dublin too were on the back of a sustained run of supremacy in the eastern province that hadn’t yet resulted in a Sam Maguire trophy, but manager Pat O’Neill had put his faith in an unproven full forward whose atypical background was no barrier to his ascent into legendary status with the Hill 16 regulars after a string of crucial goals.

Jason Sherlock’s goal on that 1995 afternoon was the deciding factor in a tight game, and this Sunday, Eoghan O’Gara’s battle with Cork full back Michael Shields is likely to play a big part as Dublin are likely to need to get in behind the Cork defence for a goal or two. On paper, based on concession of scores to his direct opponent, Shields has performed well in 2010, but O’Gara is the most robust opponent he will have faced so far and Shields’ tendency to take full advantage of his “allowance” of two or three fouls when under pressure might not get him out of trouble against the Templeogue player who tends to ignore fouls and continue bullocking forward.

Cork’s win over Roscommon was by far the most underwhelming performance of the four quarter final winners, but allowance must be made for the extremely limited challenge that Roscommon presented in opposition to Cork. The Connacht champions were way out of their depth at that stage of the championship and it was no coincidence that Cork only looked good once the Sheepstealers had the temerity to take the lead early in the second half, essentially rousing their opponents into action. Still, Conor Counihan’s men looked both powerful and directionless in their play at times and could find this Dublin team surprisingly capable of counteracting their pace and movement.

Cork’s dominance of primary possession has been one of their strongest assets in recent years but here too, it’s difficult to make a confident call about how the two sides will match up this weekend. Any one of Murphy, Walsh, O’Connor and Kavanagh could start in the engine room for Cork, while there was no real kickout battle between Dublin and Tyrone since both sides took the short kickout option when it was offered. Dublin have been voracious at devouring breaks but they will expect to concede many more clean catches than they make themselves. This won’t be a problem if they can prevent the Cork wing backs and wing forwards from finding space and the football around the middle third and instead force Cork to play the ball backwards, thus allowing their blanket defence to reset. In this regard, the potential loss of Graham Canty could prove crucial.

More than any other player, Canty is able to take opposition defenders out of the game and create missed tackles, even going through heavy traffic areas in the middle of the field. He’s likely to play some part in Sunday’s match, but if he’s any way short of full fitness, Cork will be missing a crucial aspect of their play.

The match prices of 7/4 about Dublin and 8/13 about Cork already suggest that a fair amount of improvement in form for Cork is priced in, but that expectation might not yet come to pass. Dublin’s full back line is improving with every game and while Pierce O’Niell remains a wild card, Cork’s unsettled forward line might struggle to score with regularity. Dublin are far from the finished article, but in terms of value, they offer much more than the Rebels. A 2pt bet on Dublin at 7/4 is the obvious match betting play in this game, with nerves of steel required for the early stages, when Dublin have tended to struggle in games so far.

As anyone who bought a house in Ireland in the last five years will tell you, jumping on board a moving bandwagon can be a very dangerous game. Mistiming such a jump were one to take it literally would result in a serious dent to one’s physical well being, much like mistiming such a metaphorical jump could similarly result in a serious dent in one’s financial well being. Obviously it’s a lot easier to limit one’s exposure in the betting game than it is when buying a home, but there is still plenty of risk attached in looking at a graph and guessing that the recent upward trend is likely to continue.

From several weeks back, Off the Ground was looking forward to this weekend’s betting and suspected that there was likely to be real value in taking a punt on Tír Chonall Gaels to surprise Kilmurry-Ibrickane. The London champions have participated in this competition in each of the past two seasons and two creditable performances resulted in games against Crossmaglen Rangers in 2008 (0-10 to 0-6) and Corofin last year (2-7 to 0-6).

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