Posts Tagged ‘Limerick’
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.
After a dismal weekend for the senior hurlers of both Clare and Limerick, it falls to the under-21 hurlers of each county to try and salvage something for the season when they compete for a place in the Munster final tomorrow night in the Gaelic Grounds. After a long and lean decade when they failed to win a Munster title at either age group, the fortunes of Clare underage hurling have turned around in the last twelve months and their All Ireland under-21 championship last year has heightened the sense of optimism in the county that better days may lie ahead. A minor title was also banked by the Banner county last Sunday and their status as 1/4 favourites in advance of tomorrow night’s game is unsurprising to those who would might simply look at the bare form of the match.
Looking back to the minor championship of three years ago would be little help either since both teams exited that championship tamely at the hands of Tipperary, who went on to win the All Ireland.
If you spend enough time in betting circles, whether that is in betting shops, on online discussion fora or even in casinos, eventually you’ll meet someone who will happily regale you with tales of their foolproof betting “system”. Their method will often turn out to be some variant on the Martingale system, an age old technique which, unfortunately, doesn’t stand up to mathematical scrutiny. After all, if there was a foolproof system, everyone would be using it and bookmakers would be out of business.
The Martingale system, for those who have never heard of it, is quite simple and is best explained using the roulette wheel for illustration. A bettor places one euro on red, and if he/she wins, pockets the euro as the exercise is now over. If their bet loses, they then place two euro on red next time around. If it wins, they are now up one euro, if not they move on and place four the next time. The theory is that red must come up eventually, and by doubling the stake every time and collecting whenever it does, the bettor will eventually be up by one euro.
It’s not difficult to make a case for either Galway or Waterford this weekend. Galway have been very impressive so far this season, competing well against Kilkenny before securing solid and well deserved wins over Clare and Cork. They’ve clearly addressed a few key problem positions on the field, and Joe Canning is no longer their only outlet for scores.
Waterford on the other hand have been really struggling to ignite and if anything they have taken over from Galway and become hurling’s main one man show, with John Mullane making a legitimate case for a hurler of the year award amidst a team which has otherwise been lethargic and disappointing. Nonetheless it should not be forgotten that they have been trained all year to peak around now and they also secured a few huge wins last season when, it could be argued, their form was no better than it is at the moment. 9/4 looks to be a huge price about a team that has not lost to Galway in their last seven championship meetings, though it must be said that most of those games are a part of history rather than form. If Waterford do get their act together they could cause Galway a lot of problems, but unfortunately that looks like a big “if”.
After getting some of Kilkenny into our antepost portfolio a few weeks ago, there’s very little else can be done with the outright markets for the hurling until the season really kicks off in earnest. The Ulster Championship is a non event even if the odds makers do eventually get around to pricing it up, while Galway’s introduction into Leinster has at least made it possible, if far from probable, that Kilkenny might not cruise to yet another Bob O’Keeffe cup success.
While the last thing Off the Ground wants to do is to add more grist to the mill of Munster hurling supremacists, the truth is that in June and early July it’s simply the only show in town. Parity and quality are not always the same thing, a point sometimes lost on those who cannot see past hellfire and brimstone Sundays in Semple Stadium, but it does at least make for a more competitive betting event.
