Ever since they beat Western Gaels in the Roscommon semi-final, St Brigids have been very little over even money for the Connacht club football championship, and even at that skinny price they still represented value most of the way along. The Kiltoom and Cam parish club have both the top level talent and the depth to rival any other football club west of the Shannon, and while the Gaels were a potential banana skin, neither Elphin nor the Sligo/Leitrim champions represented any kind of threat to their place in a second consecutive Connacht final.

The reason they were good value then was because there was the possibility that a moderate side would come from the Galway/Mayo side of the draw – somebody like Tuam Stars, or Castlebar Mitchels. Such an opponent would be well able to play football, but would lack the experience to deliver a victory over the wily Roscommon men in a November match and would have been priced at 2/1 or so. Instead, St Brigids are lined up to meet the very last team that they would have chosen – an in-form Corofin side.

Despite the fact that these two clubs will have shared five of the last six Connacht club titles by Sunday evening, they’ve never had a chance to develop any kind of rivalry. St Brigid’s edged them in the 2006 final in Dr Hyde Park when Karol Mannion’s dramatic last minute goal was enough to secure a 1-10 to 3-3 victory, but since then they’ve never both come out of their domestic championships in the same year. They don’t have the shared past that you get with Crossmaglen and Ballinderry or St Galls up north, or with Kilmacud Crokes and Rhode in Leinster.

The TG4 gurus made a very good choice in heading to Kiltoom this Sunday because the match promises so much and yet is so difficult to call. St Brigids have been untested all year long – they won their first match by double scores, 0-10 to 0-5 over Roscommon Gaels, and since then no club has got any closer to beating them all year. They’ve won their seven games by an average of just over nine points, while Corofin started slowly but hit a rich vein of form in their Galway semi-final win over Milltown and have continued that trend ever since. They let Ballintubber get away from them in the Connacht semi-final at McHale Park, but their second quarter performance, when they turned a 1-4 to 0-1 deficit into a four point half time lead, was perhaps the most devastating spell of football from any club in the provincial championships so far.

The bookies are generally siding with the home side, albeit very tentatively, with Paddy Power the notable exception at even money Corofin and 11/10 St Brigids. Even they however are falling into line to a certain degree, after offering 6/5 about the reigning Connacht champions earlier in the week, St Brigids backers presumably picking up the out of line offer.

Picking a winner here is very difficult, so instead we’re going to look to a subsidiary market – which team will score the first goal. Paddy Power make it 5/4 each of two and 7/2 no goal, but while it’s difficult to pick a winner of the match, St Brigids should be the clear favourites in this market. Their policy of hitting Senan Kilbride with long deliveries creates a lot of goalmouth action and while they didn’t raise a green flag against Tourlestrane, they’ve been hitting the net regularly all year with ten goals in six Roscommon championship matches. In contrast, Corofin have yet to score two goals in a single game all year. They’ve looked good at scoring points all right with plenty of scoring coming from their half forward line, but they haven’t been posing that inside line threat and don’t even deliver the ball in a fashion suited to creating goals. Against a good St Brigids full back line, they’ll probably look at accumulating a winning total by way of points alone in this tie. In fact 11/10 about no Corofin goal also makes some appeal, but our narrrow preference is for siding with St Brigids to goal first at 5/4.

Connacht SFC Final Recommendation

St Brigids vs Corofin: St Brigids to score the first goal @ 5/4 (Powers)

The age old issue of whether to back or oppose a strong favourite, so often discussed in this column, rears its head once again this week as we take a look at the Galway senior football championship and whether to back or oppose Corofin. The stalwarts of Connacht football almost hit a stumbling block in their quarter final meeting with Caherlistrane but after being brought to a replay, and reduced to fourteen men in that replay when Gary Sice was shown a red card, they still dug deep and engineered a 1-11 to 0-10 victory. Kilkenny hurlers may have found out last Sunday that five in a row is a very difficult thing to do, but right now the bookies make it odds on, or 4/7 to be exact, that Corofin finish matters out from here and make it three senior football championships in a row.

Equally pertinent in assessing the Galway football scene is a quick look at the other contenders still in the race. Any team who gets to this stage of a competitive championship like the Galway SFC must be taken seriously, however a look at the other contenders suggests that Corofin are in a very strong position right now as no new and up and coming team has really put their hand up for consideration.

This Sunday it’s Barna who face the champions and while the west Galway club have been a breath of fresh air in this championship, they have a long way to go before being considered genuine contenders and should be well out of their depth this week. Barna GAA club is a great success story and they have made their way up from the junior ranks in a relatively short period of time, however competing against heavyweight clubs like Corofin is a huge test for any club, doubly so for one as inexperienced as Barna. Barna started this year with a one point win over Caltra, but Michael Meehan was missing that day and Caltra went on to prove that they weren’t up to the pace this year, exiting the championship at the next hurdle to Caherlistrane by a six point margin. Since then the draw has been comparitively kind to them and they arrive at this stage without having beaten a single team that one would rate as in the top 6-8 clubs in Galway. Corofin will win this tie by as much as they like.

The other semi final is an intriguing match up between two North Galway clubs that have some star names but possibly lack for a little bit of depth. Killererin are well know to most football followers as the home of the Joyces and for that reason alone, they must be rated highly. They have put some good wins into the record books this year and will come into this tie high on confidence. They did lose in round one to Mountbellew-Moylough, and many people would argue that it’s never easy to beat any team in championship once, so it’s certainly not easy to do it twice.

That said, this column believes that Mountbellew-Moylough can create a minor upset this Sunday and reach their second consecutive final. They have been very efficient this year and at club level, a player of Joe Bergin’s calibre is of huge value. Their defence is very strong having conceded 1-24 in three championship games to this stage and while they never win games comfortably, they feel that they didn’t do themselves justice in last year’s final and have been playing some very solid football to give themselves a chance of redemption this year.

Mountbellew-Moylough are the better bet this Sunday and at 9/2 it’s worth keeping them onside, but only if Corofin are the main selection. 3pts on Corofin to win the Galway championship outright at 4/7 won’t make anyone rich but it is a very solid wager, while a 0.5pt covering bet on Mountbellew-Moylough at 9/2 should be enough to ensure that the final can be a very comfortable occasion with no severe downside.

Most GAA fans would agree that it’s great to have the league back, but that there’s still nothing like championship. As a result, this weekend Sunday is definitely the day to head out for a walk, or go to the shops to look at carpets, or whatever it is that the other half would have you do – because Saturday should be an excellent day’s viewing on the box. Yours truly doesn’t get the chance to be a couch potato too often but the opportunity will certainly be taken up tomorrow, starting with the Sigerson Cup final at 2pm.

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As was discussed previously in this column, bookmakers often don’t give antepost books the care and attention that they deserve. The reasoning is simple enough – most punters don’t have the patience to put their money down for months at a time, so the compilers know that errors will go unpunished more often than not.

The greater length of time between striking the bet and collecting also allows for a greater amount of random factors to enter into the equation, but nevertheless, the opportunities for finding value are usually a lot more plentiful in antepost markets.

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With TG4 resuming their coverage of club action, there is an unexpected bonus for those of us looking at a bet this weekend – their live broadcast of the Donegal and Galway county finals means that there is a much wider range of markets available for betting on these games, and more markets, as always, means more opportunity for the punter.

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While Croke Park will be hosting three All Ireland finals this Sunday, it’s probably not unreasonable that for most of the GAA membership all across the country this weekend, the real focus will be on the club fixtures that are being played all across Ireland. The weekend in between All-Ireland finals is traditionally one where counties put busy programmes in place and this weekend is no different, with several very interesting betting opportunities resulting from the wide range of fixtures being played.

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Ask not what Off the Ground can do for you, but instead ask what you can do for Off the Ground!

Despite what it may sound like, that isn’t actually this column’s attempt at getting you, the reader, to do all the work. Instead, that is an ideal way forward to get plenty of winners over the Autumn as the bookmakers start to price club games and championships all over Ireland. Every reader of this column has a home county, and chances are there are one or two other counties as well where they have different reasons for being familiar with the local scene. With that in mind, don’t be shy about using the add comment facility on any of these blog posts. If you haven’t posted before, then it may take a while for your post to appear as it has to be moderated (you’d be surprised how many people out there think that this is a good site to try and advertise tamiflu or viagra online!) but once your first post is put up, from then on your comments will appear instantly. Unless you try to sell us tamiflu or viagra of course.

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