Posts Tagged ‘Derry’
For every county in Ireland bar Kilkenny, the national football league gets underway this weekend and the viewing public are set to get their first snapshot of how various teams are likely to fare in 2010. While many counties will continue to experiment to a certain degree in the league, the difference in intensity between this weekend and the preseason competitions is sure to be noticeable as teams look to get their season off to a decent start and take the pressure off the latter stages of the competition. For now we’re going to look at the games in division one and two, with the lower divisions to follow later.
If nothing else, Off the Ground would like to pride itself on being accessible. After all, a lifetime (a dog’s lifetime perhaps, but you get the idea) of operating on the opposite side of the betting counter can sometimes cause one to develop a certain way of looking at things, while an alternative perspective is often just what’s needed. For example, a couple of emails to yours truly have suggested that readers would appreciate a points recommendation system so as to guage better the weight with which each recommendation is suggested.
Generally speaking your columnist is not really a fan of this structure since the point of this column is not to engender blind obedience – the idea is that the method behind the madness is laid bare and then punters can discern for themselves whether or not they agree with the logic put forth. Occasionally – as in the case of the DIT game recently – your writer will do his best to exhort less thinking and more frantic wagering, however in general the idea is that the reader would selectively engage with the points raised rather than blindly follow the suggested actions. However with that clearly stated, Off the Ground is henceforth willing to follow a points system, with recommendations pointed on a scale of one to ten – however be aware it will be rare enough that more than five or six points is encouraged.
The National Football League resumed last week and as we anticipated, there were upsets – however to this column’s dismay, they didn’t occur in the games that were flagged up as such. Longford and Fermanagh did both show plenty of competitiveness, but staying within the handicap was sadly of little value to those going for the outright win.
The one thing that could be taken from the weekend was some interesting insight into which teams had used their three week break well and which counties appear to have stalled in their development. In particular, the positives would appear to be with Galway, Kildare, Monaghan, Tipperary, and Waterford, while Westmeath, Armagh, Laois, Louth and Clare all appear to be going in the wrong direction, or standing still at best.
