Posts Tagged ‘Cork’
Cork City travel to Galway to face Salthill Devon this evening and with Shane Barrett back on board and one or two other transfer window signings, they look capable of getting close to a play-off spot.
Salthill Devon have had a tough season and it will not get any easier tonight. We can see Cork winning this one at 10-21 with bwin.com, still a bet worth taking at the price. The draw is 3-1 with Ladbrokes, while the hosts are 13-2 with Boylesports. But we can only see one outcome.
A quick look at the bonus accumulators available about the four football championship quarter finals available this weekend reveals that the most favoured outcome is a repeat of last year’s semi final lineup, when Cork and Kerry beat Tyrone and Meath respectively.
Cork are by far the most heavily favoured of the eight teams in action this weekend and though the match odds of 1/9 probably won’t attract anything other than multiple bets, it’s easy to understand the bookmakers’ reticience to try and draw in members of the money buying community. Roscommon’s win in Connacht could not have happened were it not for a very handy draw and there is no way that there presence in the last eight of the All Ireland race suggests that they are suddenly one of the better teams in Ireland.
Roscommon manager Fergal O’Donnell has been very open about the fact that his team are in “bonus country” and that his team don’t entertain any notions of being All Ireland contenders this year. Such honesty is a refreshing change from the usual cliché-ridden manager speak where phrases like “we’ll have to work a lot harder” and “it’s all on the day” are liberally applied to couch the fact that nothing at all of consequence is said. Openly admitting that every game from now is about experience should be a liberating sensation for the Roscommon footballers who will be encouraged to play with abandon and when this is contrasted with the nervy and uneasy football that we’ve seen from Cork in the last couple of qualifier rounds, it’s easy to see that Roscommon are in a much better mental position coming into this tie.
Of course no amount of psychological factors will sufficiently compensate for the fact that this Cork team is way superior to their Roscommon counterparts in most facets of play. Cork are capable of playing quality football at a much higher tempo than the Rossies but with their attacking unit misfiring, the seven point handicap might be a little too steep for Conor Counihan’s men to overcome. In particular, Cork have struggled to get goals this year and two green flags in five championship games shows that Cork will have to be a lot better than Roscommon to cover this spread, unless that trend changes.
The 1/9 is home and hosed but despite this, a 3pt bet on Roscommon plus seven points at 5/4 is the best recommendation of the weekend.
Tyrone’s Ulster final performance was without question the best team display of the season so far, but this column has supported Dublin in their last two games on the grounds that this new look team is working together extremely well for a side that is very much in the first year of collective development. Dublin’s hunger and aggression in the tackle has been outstanding so far this year but that ability will be tested to the full tomorrow. Dublin are live outsiders but the odds seem correct since every Tyrone performance so far has been increasingly impressive, while at the same time suggesting that there is an extra gear to be found if the need arose.
Kildare and Meath is an intriguing quarter final but one where the prices are difficult to dispute. 4/5 about over 30.5 points is the standout bet in this fixture, even allowing for the remarkable amount of wides being struck by this Kildare attack. The possibility of a tense nervy finish prevents a recommendation here, but this is a tie that could very easily end up with as many as 35 scores in the match.
Kerry and Down is a more difficult tie to assess, but while the Kingdom are without some very important performers for this weekend’s tie, Down simply aren’t playing at the required level to take advantage of this fact, no matter what their demolition of Sligo suggests. Any other draw for the Kingdom and they could easily have fallen by the wayside, but Down have too many weaknesses, particularly in the centre of defence, to be able to sustain a challenge against Jack O’Connor’s team.
Down were caught on the hop against Offaly, but otherwise have been known for bursting out of the blocks in most of their games this season. Kerry may find that they’ll take some time to get accustomed to playing without Tomás Ó’Sé and Paul Galvin, so Down could easily build up a lead in this one. Kerry should find their rhythm and eventually secure the win, but the double result bet of Down/Kerry at 11/2 looks very appealing and is worthy of a 1pt bet to round off our punting for the weekend.
The “Fish and Chip shop tour of Ireland”, as it was once called by Colm O’Rourke on the Sunday game, draws to a close this weekend as the final four qualifier fixtures take place and line up for the football championship quarter finals is finalised. Round four is usually one of the trickier rounds to assess, as the mental state of the provincial final losers is always difficult to predict with confidence. In theory, Limerick should be the most positive team of the four since they played some great football against a good Kerry team and they have the advantage of both a long break and a home draw, but they’ve been handed a very tough opponent in Cork and could conceivably play very well and still fall short.
Cork look to pass another milestone on their return to the top of hurling’s pecking order today when they meet Waterford in the Munster Final at Semple Stadium.
The Rebels go in to the showpiece as 4/9 favourites to win over 70 minutes, its 10/1 the draw and we go 2/1 about a Waterford win.
Cork derailed Tipperary’s bid for a third successive Munster title when they stunned them in the opening provincial game. Aisake O hAilpin was the chief menace to Tipperary’s defence that day but as seen in the semi-final against Limerick, the element of surprise in his play may well now be on the wane and we’ll probably see Waterford sit someone on top of John Gardiner to stop the supply reaching the Rebels target man. Nevertheless we still reckon O hAilpin to be one of the most likely scorers and we have him priced at 7/1 to score the opening goal, sharing favouritism with his team mate Pat Horgan – a man in a rich vein of scoring this summer.
Waterford seem to have one or two superb performances in their locker every year to produce when least expected and the incentive of bowing out with a Munster title will certainly appeal to some of their elder warriors who may be considering hanging up the timber. They didn’t particularly impress in their semi final win over Clare – a formline that looks even weaker when you take Dublin’s win over Clare yesterday in to account but the likes of John Mullane is perhaps due one of those talismanic days we have come to expect from him. The De La Salle forward is even money to score 4 or more points in the game, or you can oppose him at 8/11 if you think he’ll score less than 4.
It’s a 4 o’clock throw in at Thurles make sure you join us for our range of in-play markets throughout the game.
When the dust settles on the 2010 championship season, neither Kerry nor Cork will attach too much significance to winning this Sunday’s clash in Killarney. The simple fact is that success or failure in 2010 will be defined by lifting the Sam Maguire cup, no less. Regardless of this fact, an excellent Munster semi final is expected, one that should ignite the football championship in the same way that last Sunday’s Munster hurling quarter final kick-started the hurling championship.
Much of the pre match build up has focussed on the personnel that will and won’t be taking part in this game, understandably so bearing in mind the big names who were uncertain to participate. The short term absentees like Paul Galvin and John Miskella will be missed in Killarney, but perhaps more relevant is the long term absence of the twin towers at midfield, Darragh Ó’Sé and Nicholas Murphy. No one would dream suggest that Aidan Walsh or Michael Quirke are poor quality replacements, indeed both men would probably walk on to most teams in Ireland, but Ó’Sé and Murphy have been going toe to toe for the best part of a decade now and their clashes have never been anything less than enthralling.
If you’re one of the many punters out there who still hasn’t decided what way to look in terms of antepost betting for the All Ireland and provincial football championships, the conclusion of the national leagues brings that issue right to the forefront of all of our thinking. While there will be plenty of challenge matches played between now and the start of the really meaningful action, the last proper competitive match has now taken place and it is the information on the table that must now be used in putting together a portfolio, nothing new other than injury news will come to light.
The first and most obvious question is how good are Cork? The newly crowned league champions were probably the best team in the All Ireland championship last year if one was to look at the championship in it’s entirety, however they failed to secure the ultimate accolade when Kerry outplayed them in the game that mattered most. Once again, they have proven that they are probably the most consistently strong outfit in the country, but are they equally susceptible to a sucker punch from the Kingdom, or indeed any of the other contenders?
If the world of hurling worked in a similar fashion to the WWE (or the WWF as a few people might remember it) then Tipperary would now, by virtue of their win over Kilkenny, be the reigning All Ireland Champions. In the wrestling world, they may have ended up winning it only after Liam Sheedy came onto the field and hit Tommy Walsh over the back of the head with a steel chair, but they’d still be the champions right now.
Of course in the real world, Kilkenny remain the kingpins and Tipperary are the number one contenders when it comes to championship honours irrespective of any league results – but that means little to punters right now, looking for winners in mid-March.
In the general betting universe, the recession can sometimes work slightly differently to how it affects the rest of the world. The usual response to a downturn in economic conditions is not that bookmakers do much better, as is often perceived to be the case, but that they strike many more bets at a much lower average stake. Overall turnover usually declines, however this decline is compensated for by the fact that punters are looking for the same big payouts off much smaller stakes and thus they generally place accumulators, or other high margin bets, rather than picking off the value.
From a discerning punter’s point of view, where value is always the key, whether the starting bank is €100 or €100,000, a recession is usually not good news since it can mean an end to the “easy money” for many layers. The response to this from the bookmaking community would often be to cut back on innovation, eliminating those products which are more difficult to price, and to focus instead on more “jackpot” style bets – special multiples paying out big sums, complicated first scorer/winning margin doubles and other bets paying 20/1 or more.
In that light, it was all the more encouraging to see Ladbrokes pricing up their new “Top 4” market for division one of the NFL. It’s reasonable to presume that the level of turnover in the next week or so will determine whether or not we see similar markets created for the other divisions, but even if this is as far as the offering is extended, it’s still good to see and is to be encouraged in the betting community in general.
Regarding their actual pricing, most of the counties appear to be reasonably accurately assessed. Kerry’s price of 1/5 about their finishing in the top four may appear quite short when one considers that the Kingdom are happy to win the National League, but quite unperturbed about their fortunes in the competition nonetheless. Instead the short odds are a reflection of the fact that they still tend to be difficult to beat in the league due to their incredible strength in depth, even if they are playing with August and September in mind.
Likewise at the other end, Monaghan are a fiercely competitive side, but one or two injuries would hit them very hard and they will have their work cut out for themselves dodging relegation. Their odds of 5/2 to finish in the top four may look generous, but there doesn’t appear to be any real value there either, albeit more than there is in the 1/4 about a bottom four finish.
Tyrone’s track record in the national league was strong up until a couple of seasons ago, and even though their championship record remains impressive, they are no longer so metronomic in the league that teams are guaranteed to crumble under them. Results like their narrow win over Westmeath last year, a game that the Red Hands should have lost, simply would not have happened back in the middle of the decade.
Mayo and Derry are ostensibly among the bottom tier of counties in this division but remain difficult to beat, particularly at home, so their odds seem accurate enough too. If forced to bet, this column would lean towards the 6/5 about Derry finishing in the top four and the 8/13 about Mayo finishing in the bottom half, but not so much that a bet would be recommended.
Galway too could go either way under the stewardship of Joe Kernan and could not be backed or opposed with confidence, which leaves only Cork and Dublin as our betting opportunities – and now we hit the real value. In terms of championship football, Cork, with two All Ireland appearances in the past three seasons, are undoubtedly at a higher level than the Dubs, but that doesn’t mean that they are suddenly way superior, merely that bit better able to deliver in All Ireland quarter and semi finals. In league football, the Dubs have been very consistent in recent seasons while Cork have been a little bit more hit and miss.
When a bookmaker disagrees with you, it’s always useful to know why, and in this instance it’s probably fair to say that the home draw for Cork is the big factor. Both sides have three home games in their fixtures against other teams, but when they are scheduled to meet just after the halfway point of the campaign, the tie will be played in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
However in this writer’s case, that is compensated for by the scheduling. Kerry’s struggles in round one of the league are by now legendary and whether or not there is an underlying reason for this, it cannot be ignored – and Dublin have the benefit of playing Kerry in the opening round of games. With Dublin’s infamous training regime likely to have the boys in blue firing on all cylinders relatively early, they could pull off a surprise here.
For Cork, it’s the opposite. They meet Monaghan in round one – a team that most counties will be looking to beat, but one that is likely to get their best results early on; according to our look at Ulster counties and their performances in the opening round fixtures of league campaigns last week.
Cork probably should be favoured to edge out Dublin overall, but only marginally – the odds posted on Ladbrokes.com suggest that a bigger disparity exists between the teams than is genuinely the case. In the interests of spreading the risk, the best policy here is to have a 1.5pt bet on Cork to finish in the bottom four at 5/2, and a further 1.5pt bet on Dublin to finish in the top four at 2/1. These bets should each be odds against, but not to the extent that they are, and as we’ve discussed at length, whether in recession or boom, value remains the key criterion for any punter looking to post a black figure in his profit and loss accounts.
Odd though it may seem, there is one peculiar anomaly in the GAA which can, if a certain set of circumstances come into play, result in a team being eliminated from the race for the All Ireland club championship even though they might be the best club team in the land. Of course bad days can happen to anyone, that’s simply football or hurling in action, but this past weekend Dr Crokes were eliminated by South Kerry and thus were ruled out from competing for the All Ireland club championship, despite certainly being among the top three or four clubs left in contention before Sunday, and possibly even being the most talented of the lot.
Amidst all the furore over the player of the year awards, one thing is for sure – no bookie will be putting up a price on who will be named young player of the year. Anyone offering anything greater than 1/20 about Colm O’Neill winning the award would have their hand bitten off right now, with only Michael Murphy of Donegal having even a long shot’s hope of stealing the accolade.
But while it’s been a wonderful year for the Ballyclough star, there’s no reason to think that his year is done and dusted – in fact O’Neill looks well poised to play a big part in Sunday’s game, and there’s plenty of cause to get your money down on him doing just that.
