As any odds compiler will tell you, one of the most difficult games to price up is the match where highly relevant information is going to become available in the future but isn’t to hand just yet. The perfect example is pricing up a weekend sporting event on Monday or Tuesday when that team will be in action on Wednesday or Thursday night.

That was exactly the situation that GAA compilers found themselves in this week, having to issue odds on weekend matches before midweek under 21 games.

In some cases, the results might not seem hugely relevant in that the number of players crossing over could be very few, however that discounts the value of feelgood factor in many counties, particularly when under 21 and senior panels train together as is the case in Westmeath.

Ladbrokes appear to be a lot more on the ball than most bookmakers in this regard and they are best priced at even money about Tipperary, however even so Westmeath should be able to use the renewed enthusiasm in their camp and break their run of sixteen league games without a win.

Neither Wexford nor Louth are heavily dependent on young talent, indeed the Wee and the Wex counties generally vie for the honour of the oldest intercounty football squads on the go. However the comprehensive nature of Wexford’s dismantling of Louth and under 21 level last night, combined with the feelgood factor from securing the only away win so far in this division, means that the offer of 8/11 about a Wexford home win looks like it should definitely pay out this week.

Louth continue to be over-rated generally due to their Leinster Final story last year but they are a division three county who tend to be at their best early in the year – with every passing week they will come back to meet the pack and that process could start this weekend.

Wicklow had a seemingly very strong group of under 21 footballers but they came a cropper against Carlow and now the seniors must face a tricky away trip to Fermanagh this weekend. Again, there isn’t a huge amount of crossover between the seniors and under 21 players in the Garden county, but with both sides having dropped points so far and Roscommon and Longford moving well, the loser of this tie could find themselves in huge trouble at this early stage of the season. At 8/13, Fermanagh look like a solid bet to compound Wicklow’s misery.

With much greater depth in their squads, Meath and Dublin should feel less of an effect, however Meath’s atrocious record away from Páirc Tailteann is reason enough to steer clear of them for their trip to Casement Park, while eighty minutes of football won’t help the cause of players like Shane Gillespie or Paddy Gilsenan, particularly as the match takes place only three days later instead of four.

Republic of Ireland under-21 manager Noel King revelled in watching “champagne football” as he celebrated his debut game in charge with a thumping win.

King’s team crushed Estonia 5-0 for their first competitive victory since November 2007, a run that recently brought to an end the 10-year reign of Don Givens.

King took charge of a low-on-confidence side that had suffered three defeats and four draws in group two of qualification for the European Under-21 Championships.

But at Tallaght Stadium the Republic appeared a team transformed, with Hibernian winger Anthony Stokes on fire as he scored twice in the first half before playing a part in the other three in the second.

“Three points and a clean sheet is what we were looking for, but we got a bit of champagne football at the end,” said King, previously at the helm of all of the womens’ teams for the Republic.

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.

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Nobody likes bankers very much these days and visions of Seanie Fitzpatrick and the like living it up on the taxpayers’ shilling is hard to stomach for a lot of people, but in a betting shop, bankers are still very welcome. Everybody loves a short odds favourite that looks like it can’t lose and “bankers” thus get inserted to make up the odds on every multiple bet going.

This column has never been a huge fan of multiple bets since mathematically, there is much more margin built in than is the case with single bets. As any bookie worth his salt will tell you, a punter who regularly bets 7/1 single bets will almost always beat the punter who places the same stake on a treble on three even money shots, simply because the margin built into the treble is usually so much more.

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It’s a particularly busy weekend for a lot of the better younger footballers all across the country, with under 21 matches today and a full round of league games taking place tomorrow. Depending on how seriously managers are taking the national league and the under 21 championship, players could easily end up being asked to take part in both competitions, and from a betting point of view, that will be something to keep a close eye on when the league matches thrown in tomorrow – who will be deploying the greatest number of tired young legs.

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After the glamour and the tension of last Sunday’s final, we come back closer to Earth this weekend with the Under 21 hurling final the highlight of the weekend. We say closer rather than the whole way back to Earth since it still has the potential to be a pretty fantastic match up.

This Clare team have done their county proud this season with a string of fine performances. They had a good local derby win over Limerick before securing the Munster Title that they probably deserved in 2008 with a great win over Waterford in Fraher Field. Against Galway in the semi final they stepped up the intensity another notch and came away with a memorable win despite the best efforts of Joe Canning.

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It’s a quite well known fact that if you had backed Down in each of their senior All Ireland Final appearances, you’d be sitting on a quite healthy profit right now – albeit one slowly accumulated over the course of a half century. With five wins out of five, the Mourne men have an unprecedented strike rate in the annual football showpiece and it’s a source of constant pride to those vested in Down football.

With four wins from five appearances, Down minor footballers have an impressive record of their own, leaving only the under 21 grade where the county has a much more mundane track record, having registered one win from three deciders played before this year.

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It would be easy to look at this and say that Down’s record is not a factor at under 21 level to the same extent, however that would be to ignore the simple fact that the five out of five statistic at senior level is something that every Down GAA man or woman would be able to rhyme off at the drop of a hat, and any group of players who has grown up believing their county’s impregnable record in finals is unlikely to be overawed or overwhelmed on the big day.

Of course there’s a lot more to winning an All Ireland title than simply keeping your nerve on the day, a team must also have the ability and the skill to get themselves into a winning position before the mental strength to close out proceedings comes into play, but anyone who has seen this Down under 21 team perform in 2009 will have no doubts about the level of their ability. This is a team of pure footballing talent from one to thirty, a group of players who play the game the right way, fast, competitively and working hard for each other, moving the ball quickly and accurately to a man in a better position than the passer.

In the clamour to blame Gaelic Football’s ills on excessive use of the handpass technique, it can often be forgotten that good handpassing football can be just as good to watch, as long as it is executed swiftly and with purpose. Watching a team flood forward, supporting each other with well timed and well paced runs is a joy to behold, and that’s exactly how this Down team like to move the ball. Backwards handpassing, or “crab football”, where teams move side to side until eventually someone punts the ball forward out of boredom might be killing Gaelic football, but blame those teams, not the ones who use the handpass as it was always intended.

With Down likely to repeat their fine form of the Mayo game and Cork running out of lives in this campaign, as well as missing their centre forward Shane McCarthy, this Monday’s All Ireland Under 21 final looks destined to be won by the men from Mourne. Offered by the bookmakers as one point favourites, Down are very fair value and are well worthy of a 4pt bet at 8/11. Down’s likely confidence is all important here because these prices look as if there was a considerable degree of “traditional county” bias shown to Cork – something which this columns suspects will not play a part.

Turning to the hurling, and regular followers of this column shouldn’t be feeling the need to have another bet on the final as both Wexford and Tipperary have already been recommended, so any bets would either be for the purposes of an additional interest just for flavour, or else possibly to close off a guaranteed profit.

Sadly, with Kilkenny playing so well, Tipperary are actually now longer than their recommended price of 11/4 to lift the trophy, despite six contenders having fallen by the wayside, so no guaranteed profit is available here. Indeed the odds on Brian Cody’s men to repeat their regular season victory over their neighbours are so short that only the handicap is really a viable betting medium, and sadly for those who would like to see a competitive fixture on Sunday, the inclination is to side with Kilkenny to cover even an eight point spread.

Tipperary probably remain the second best team in Ireland until anyone makes a definitive move to take that accolade from them, but even at that they still look to be a good ten points off the Kilkenny pace right now. The news that Eoin Kelly is not going to play a part on Sunday and may indeed by a spectator for the remainder of the year can’t have helped morale in the camp, while even the most casual follower of hurling will have noticed that the Tipperary fire which burned brightly for the first month of the season has very much dimmed as the year has progressed. They will bring no shortage of seething fury to Semple Stadium this Sunday after their trimming in Nowlan Park and the idea of being humiliated on their own home turf will keep them honest, but right now they simply don’t have the tools to deal with a Kilkenny team which is operating on another level entirely.

Betting on high handicaps is always a dangerous tactic in that a team often has no motivation to keep racking up the scores, particularly in a final, however with competition for places as keen as ever in Brian Cody’s squad, it would be remiss not to recommend 1pt on Kilkenny minus eight points to beat Tipperary at 10/11.

Finally we have the second instalment in this year’s Offaly vs Wexford trilogy, and with followers of Off the Ground hopefully holding dockets with 7/4 about Wexford, then the option is there to take the even money about Offaly and close off a profit. Obviously the statement that no-one ever went broke taking a profit is as true as ever, however in this instance, it looks like such a move would merely be giving the bookmaker a “bailout” of his own. Offaly’s slight resurgence last season was based on a solid foundation of consistent team selection and Joe Dooley’s constant faith in his chosen hurlers eventually bore fruit with a fantastic win over Limerick and solid display against Waterford. This season there has been considerably more chopping and changing, albeit much of it forced by injury, and the results of that uncertainty were clear to see in recent games where Offaly looked poor in certain sectors of the field. Offaly are simply not hurling as well as Wexford right now and while anything is possible in a game where both sides have proven goalscoring and indeed goal-conceding ability, Off the Ground would need to see 6/4 outright about the Faithful County before they would start looking like a viable betting proposition.

As with any sport, late tactical adjustments can go a long way towards securing the desired result in the betting game also. Team news is a tricky thing to read at this time of year as a hungry but less well known 21 year old can often be a more effective performer at this time of year than the established star who knows that his jersey is secure for the championship. However a manager’s intentions can still be read from the line up which is selected and can sometimes help point as to where the money should be placed.

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