Posts Tagged ‘Championship’
Fewer games than might have been expected fell by the wayside last weekend, with three of the five games that had been arranged playing out to a conclusion. The Connacht decider was unsurprisingly called off relatively early, while in Portlaoise, referee Joe Curley was left with little choice but to bring matters to a premature conclusion when he saw the conditions that prevailed at the start of the second half.
Indeed for those who follow this blog and its recommendations, the Meath official’s decision was extremely welcome. Portlaoise had played with the advantage of a stiff but tricky breeze in the first half, and Clara were definitely the happier team going in at half time level pegging. Stephen Deehan’s point at the start of the second half was taken with the kind of relaxed kicking stroke that simply wasn’t an option in the first half, and with Thomas Deehan also playing extremely well in the inside line, Clara were definitely odds on to progress had the match played to a natural conclusion.
For most people, being woken up by the sound of a lawnmower cutting grass at ungodly hours of the morning would be an unpleasant experience. (For your columnist, anything before 9:30 counts as ungodly, but that’s another story!) Indeed usually yours truly would not be a fan of this particular form of alarm clock either, however this week, of all weeks, it feels just right. The smell of cut grass and the start of the championship are two things which simply belong together and if a slightly earlier than usual introduction to consciousness is the cost of that, then that price is worth paying.
Of course there are those who would argue that the championship started over a week ago in New York, while there were also two games on Sunday with Fermanagh and Louth securing slots in their respective provincial quarter finals, but this week is when we finally get a proper card of fixtures, with all four provinces having games down for decision.
With the leagues drawing to a close and our antepost bets starting to wind down with them, now is a good time to start looking at the outright markets for the summer championships and to see which counties are still available at prices that could potentially offer some value. This is usually the best time of year to look at outright bets because there is a tendency for compilers to sit down after the draw in the winter and to work out all the contingent probabilities and to come up with some good prices – only to spend the Spring tweaking prices up and down depending on results rather than going back to first principles and looking at the markets from scratch at regular intervals. This occasionally results in some teams getting over-adjusted and value can often occur either in that team or in those that are lined up to take them on in the early rounds.
We’ve all been there before. The trainer who all year long has been quietly preaching the virtues of personal discipline, mental agility, tactical awareness and all those other buzzwords, walks into a dressing room on the day of the championship and turns into a raving lunatic. The wisdom of overlapping wing backs and diagonal ball into the corner forwards morphs into “GEDOUTTHEREANDBATETHESCHITEOUTTATHEMTOWNIEBASHTURDS” (Sic).
Consider this my day to do just that. So far in this column we have preached about the battle between compiler and punter, applying logical thinking and mathematical reasoning to our bets. Well today championship has arrived – a bet of considerable opportunity has presented itself and it is time to throw off the shackles and wade in as if you were marking that fecker from the neighbouring club who had the cheek to cop off with your sister some Saturday night four years ago.
