This weeks Championship games

patmac

The championship starts this weekend and not a word here about it so i'll start it. The fixtures are:
Bank of Ireland Connacht Senior Football Championship
New York 3.00 (Local Time) Sligeach v Nua Eabhrach
Bank of Ireland Leinster Senior Football Championship
Longfort 2.00 Longfort v Iar Mhí
Bank of Ireland Ulster Senior Football Championship
Kingspan 4.00 An Cabhán v An Dún
Guinness Ulster Senior Hurling Championship
Casement Park 2.00 Aontroim v Londain
Casement Park 3.45 Ard Mhacha v Doire

As a Westmeath supporter and despite all bar two boardsies going for a Westmeath win this will be a tough game for us. Luke Dempsey will know the opposition inside out and with home advantage I'll be happy with a one point win, remember Longford ran Dublin to 2 points and beat Derry last year and gave a Donaghy inspired Kerry a good run in Killarney, expect a high scoring game as both sides have strong forwards and poor backs. Three goals or more is excellent value at 12/5 with Paddy Power.
Cavan and Down will be tight with Cavan squeezing through and Derry and Antrim are expected to win.

blackbelt

As a matter of interest,is David Duffy on the subs bench for WestmeathHe is a cousin of mine and I haven't heard much of him playing for Westmeath since they crashed out to Dublin when he came on as a sub.

I'd expect Westmeath to win this game by a point or two.They had much tougher opposition in this years league and have always done well in the first round or two.They have beaten Laois and Dolan might shine in this game as he did in 2004.

Expect a 2 or 3 point win for Cavan.Down suggests the state of their opposition as well as the name of the team.

DUB

Westmeath v Longford is the pick of the weekends action for me, should be a very close game with plenty of good football, hopefully todays weather will be gone for the weekend.

patmac

blackbelt wrote:

As a matter of interest,is David Duffy on the subs bench for WestmeathHe is a cousin of mine and I haven't heard much of him playing for Westmeath since they crashed out to Dublin when he came on as a sub.

Not too sure, he was an u 21 this year and is a back-up midfielder so should be on the bench.

jackbhoy

patmac wrote:

As a Westmeath supporter and despite all bar two boardsies going for a Westmeath win this will be a tough game for us. Luke Dempsey will know the opposition inside out and with home advantage I'll be happy with a one point win, remember Longford ran Dublin to 2 points and beat Derry last year and gave a Donaghy inspired Kerry a good run in Killarney,

Its impossible to call this one. hoping Westmeaths experience will pay off and if Dessie can perform and o'Shaughnessy plays as he can at midfield we might edge it. Lonford have couple of fantastic forwards, especially Kavanagh, I've seen him play since he was u 16 and he has always stood out as class act, particularly from dead ball scenarios. Give away frees anywhere inside 45 and we'll prob be punished.....

Kojak

DUB wrote:

Westmeath v Longford is the pick of the weekends action for me

I tend to agree with that. On paper, there wouldnt appear to be much between either team, and with Luke Dempsey having "inside knowledge" of many of the Westmeath players from his time there.

With Dolan fit for the tie, I think this could be the deciding factor between the two teams. I'd say Westmeath will win by 2 points

In the Cavan v Down match, it will be interesting to see if Down's disasterous league form will impact on them for the championship. Cavan had a better spring, and IMO, will win this match by 4 or more points - thus avenging their defeat to the same opposition 12 months ago.

aidan24326

I'd go with Longford to beat Westmeath narrowly. They made good progress last year but it'll be interesting to see if they can build on it this Summer (like Louth). As another poster said both teams have lively forward lines but I think Longford's just has a bit more potency to it, take Dessie out of the Westmeath lineup and they'd be in trouble. Has the makings of a good game, I'd fancy this to better than the Cavan-Down match.

Cavan vs Down will hardly be as bad as last year's wretched game (I hope!). Down looked very poor in the league so if Cavan are any use at all they should get off to a winning start here. Though I wouldn't fancy either team to make much impact overall. Cavan will have a reasonable chance of making the Ulster final if they win on Sunday, and they just might, but I can see a short Summer for a mediocre Down team.

highlight100

aidan24326 wrote:

I'd go with Longford to beat Westmeath narrowly.

I would go with that also.

blackbelt

Strangely enough,it was the Cavan-Down match that was the showstealer at the weekend.

Reilly was terrible in goal for Cavan yesterday but he did redeem himself on one or two occasions after those soft goals.Only for that,Cavan would have walked this match.They had more scoring opportunities and were the cleaner team in what was a clean match.Cavans only problem in the forward line was playing the ball into the left corner forward where the space was extremely limited.I couldn't believe they took off Seanie Johnston.Whats up with that?

Both sets of teams looked a bit unfit however.I'd expect Cavan to come back and win this replay if they concentrate on their defence.Reilly won't be in contention for an all-star this year however and neither will Westmeaths goalkeeper.

Westmeath played really well in the first 5 mins and again in the last 10 mins of the first half.After that,they ran out of steam.Dolan wasn't on form as much as he should have.Both Bardens played really well.

Longford served notice to the rest of Leinster that they're contenders.

patmac

Watching the Westmeath game was like watching a car crash, the boys thought they had the game won at half time, dissapointing mistake from Connaghton who should have known better, revenge for Luke after the shocking treatment he got by the Football board back in 2003, what goes around comes around I suppose, karma and all that.
Both Cavan and Down will be relieved to have got a draw. Overall I thought it was a reasonable start to the league there will be a lot worse games than these two over the coming months.

Kojak

The 2 matches yesterday were entertaining from the point of view that there were a lot of mistakes by both teams, especially in the Cavan - Down match.

It was nice to see Longford's reaction to their win in the first match, you could see it meant a lot to them. Westmeath probably thought at half-time that they had won the match, despite the fact that only Dessie Dolan was playing up to 100%. 2 of the three goals scored in the match were of the dubious nature, to say the least.

Longford upped the tempo in the second half, and (on the law of averages) probably deserved to win.

The Cavan - Down match was also littered with mistakes. Cavan's second goal and Down's third were down to poor goalkeeping. I thought that, as has been said already, the substitution of seanie johnston was a strange decision as I thought he was the only cavan player in the full-forward line able to make a score for himself. Some of the hand passing was poor also, but because of this I thought the game was more interesting than everything going right.

In the replay, well its another hard one to call. Cavan maybe the slight favourites to win, but with the mistakes on both sides it could well come down to the issue of who solves more of their problems before the replay.

blackbelt

Well that substitution just cries out "panic".A lot of strange decisions have been made by managers who are losing.

One example for Dublin was the taking off of Mossy Quinn in the Mayo match.You do not take off your best free taker in a semi-final when you are one point down.

Same happened yesterday with Johnston being taken off.Cavans top sharpshooter was subbed for no real feasible reason.Its the defence that should have been sorted and changed.Not only will Cavan have to work on defence but the manager should reflect on his tactics and his selection on the bench.This manager was in charge of the Cavan minors wasn't he??

Take Coulter and Sexton out of Down and you are left with a team thats on par with Waterford and Tipperary.Its a two man team in my opinion but they made Cavan pay.The level of fitness was awful.Players going down with cramp and half looked out of breath after only 10 mins.

As was said,what made this match interesting was the mistakes being made and the amount of scores,particularly goals and the back and forth nature of the game.

In the Leinster affair,once Longford clawed ahead,you could see Westmeath give up,they knew they had it.Two cracking games.

freddy15

Absolutely disgusted with the way we died a death in the 2nd half! if only Gary had tapped over bardens effort for their first goal. Although he has stopped them before, this was his third absolute clanger this year (laois first game of league, Armagh last game).:( There did not seem to be any fight in the lads at all except for flanagan (my WH MoM). Was it lost on the line? Did they get too complacent? Its not the first time we've thrown away huge leads in the chship in recent times:(

blackbelt

There there Freddie,don't worry,Westmeath will have a good run in the qualifiers........if they bring David Duffy back

freddy15

indeed DD should have been in midfield after 5 mins of 2nd half at least.

cournioni

To be honest, Johnston hasn't been himself of late. He hasn't been playing well at all in the league and some might have said that he shouldn't have started at all. He has the quality, but is just off form at the moment.

I was more surprised with the substitution of Pierson to be honest. He won every ball that came into him and always looked like he was going to get the better of his man every time he was in posession. Couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Mackey come on though. The lad is like a headless chicken when up against intercounty standard defenders.

blackbelt

Johnston has been getting more exposure,so naturally you'd expect Keoghan to keep a higher profile name on the pitch but Mackey did contribute.Keoghan sounds to me like a manager who rolled the dice and gambled.

Who knows what would have happened if they kept Johnston on.Brolly was right though,any other team from the north would not have given Coulter the space he had on Sunday.Thats something Cavan will have to work on.

sparkulicous

blackbelt wrote:

Brolly was right though,any other team from the north would not have given Coulter the space he had on Sunday.Thats something Cavan will have to work on.

I think that they were trying this by moving Mckeever back in the second half to cover the space in front of the full backs. This though ment that downs centre half back was cleaning up in front of cavan's full forward line. We need to get a balance here!!