Posts Tagged ‘Monaghan’
Leaders Derry City make the relatively short trip to play Finn Harps today and at 4-6 with bwin.com they are very short. The draw is 5-2 with Coral and William Hill, while Harps are widely available at 4-1.
Monaghan should have enough to beat Mervue at home tonight at a general 1-5, while we think that Wexford Youths can win at home to Longford Town at a price of 11-10 with Boylesports.
Shelbourne host Limerick in the other game in the First Division and we can see this ending in a stalemate. Shels are 6-5 with bwin.com, while the draw is 9-4 with Bluesq, 888sport and Stan James. Limerick are 11-5 shots with Boyles, 888sport and Bluesq.
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.
Football followers were spoilt for choice at the weekend with plenty of action all across the country, spread over the two days of the weekend. Meath’s heroics in Croke Park certainly caught the eye and the Royals have shot up the betting to trade as 10/1 fourth favourites for the big prize, an understandable reaction to a stunning victory. These odds were undoubtedly helped by the dire fare that was on display in the second game at Croke Park when both Louth and Westmeath proved that neither county could have got anywhere close to a provincial final if it weren’t for the lopsided draw. Meath’s place in an All Ireland quarter final is all but assured and they will now get to finish out the year in the familiar surroundings of Croke Park.
Meath may have all but assured their sustained progression in the championship into August, but this column was equally as impressed with the clinical nature of Monaghan’s performance against Fermanagh. Having despatched Armagh in very stylish fashion in the Ulster championship quarter final, Sunday’s match was perfectly set up for Fermanagh to deliver an ambush against a heavily fancied Monaghan team who could easily have fallen into the trap of taking their neighbours for granted.
Concluding our series of looks at the All Ireland football championship, all that remains is to assess the “outsiders” and to see if a long shot winner is a possibility, and where the value might lie if one were to try and find a Hail Mary or two. As a rule, the All Ireland football championship is not noted for big priced winners and one would have to go back a long way to find a team that would have started the championship at 33/1 or bigger and went on to secure the crown.
Galwegians would probably point to their triumph in 1998 as a dark horse success, but even so, odds of 20/1 would have been the height of those offered. After all, they were after reaching the quarter finals of the national league having scored 1-15 per game in the round robin stages and even though they had to travel to Castlebar to play Mayo for their opening tie, that day was the only time they would have been considered real outsiders until the final. For a real surprise winner of the All Ireland, you would have to go back to Down in 1991 and before that, probably Louth in 1957.
When the final league tables are published, there will be no distinction between when the games are played – wins in early February will count for the very same as wins in April. As a result, when assessing form, the league table can hide the real truth to a certain extent.
For Roscommon footballers, this is particularly apt. They started the season with three very poor results: they were hammered by Cavan, let slip a commanding lead against a bad Fermanagh team and played abysmally for the first sixty minutes against Offaly before a giveaway goal allowed them back into the match and gave the scoreline a very flattering look. For the latter half of the campaign however, their performances have been greatly improved. They ran Antrim very close in a tough game at Dr Hyde Park, beat Louth away from home and gave a good Wexford side plenty to think about before falling short when they conceded 1-1 in the closing minutes with the league season on the line.
Last week we had a look at which counties appeared to be moving well in the preseason competitions, but just as some teams are overachieving, others are falling a little short of where they need to be and they too should be looked at, with a view to opposing them in the earlier stages of the national league or simply towards being fully informed before acting in any form.
Of course preseason competition cannot be treated too seriously and in no way should it be taken as a reliable form guide, but it remains very difficult to break a losing habit or to get players to turn around their form no matter how irrelevant the games are where such enthusiasm is expected. Preseason form should never be a primary factor in striking a bet, but it could be enough to turn an inclination into either a strong bet, or alternatively into a decision not to bet at all.
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.
