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Following my attempts to argue that Offaly footballers had an average year which was masked by the Leinster final appearance, I wonder does anyone else have a mental picture of the status/hierarchy in Leinster football. As far as I am concerned we are better than the 3 teams we beat and therefore victory was expected. I have based this on my experience on an overall basis since the mid – seventies. This simple analysis does not take into account that counties may have exceptional teams in certain years but I counteract this in that every team is beatable on any day.


My grading for Leinster is as follows:

· Dublin
· Meath Offaly
· Laois Kildare
· Louth
· The rest

So for me for example if we meet Kildare or Louth next year I would expect us to win!!

Does it depends on if you look at the Leinster championship or the All-Ireland championship? Although we got to a Leinster final, Dublin, Westmeath and Laois still got further.

My seedings would be:-

- Dublin
- Laois
- Offaly
- Westmeath
- Meath
- Kildare
- Wexford
- Louth
- Longford
- Carlow
- Wicklow

My seedings would be:-

- Dublin
- Laois
- Offaly
- Westmeath
- Wexford
- Meath
- Louth
- Kildare
- Longford
- Carlow
- Wicklow


i think only Laois or Offaly will be challanging Dublin for leinster titles in for next 2-3 years...

question;
does Louths victory in the Tommy Murphy cup automatically put them into the All Ireland series next year??

I understand that in terms of seeding it looks good, but if you were to ranke them in terms of Kerry for arguments sake - i.e. how many points each team would be underdog to Kerry in a neutral ground, I think we're a lot closer to the ones behind us than the ones in front.

Dublin +2
Laois +3.5
Offaly +5
Kildare +6
Longford +6
Meath +6
Wexford +6
Westmeath +7
Louth +8
Carlow +11
Wicklow +13

Good call LS. Longford had a great year by their standards and can rightly be mentioned in the same breath as Wexford, Kildare, Louth and a rapidly declining Meath team.

I think we could be set up for a big fall next year, what with ourselves going straight through to the quarter finals in Leinster through seedings, we will be fair game for a first round winner who will have a game under their belts, whereas we go in cold after the end of the league, and to be quite honest I would be very nervous taking on the likes of Longford or louth after the progress they have made this year alone.
my leinster seedings are
1. DUBLIN
2. LAOIS
3. MEATH [Because I think they are one county we just can't handle]
4. OFFALY
5. WESTMEATH
6. LOUTH
7. LONGFORD
8. WEXFORD
9. KILDARE
10.CARLOW
11.WICKLOW

I'd be nervous of taking on anyone in Leinster because of our tendency to give teams chances, however at least now we've given ourselves the chance of a soft draw. We've had to be championship primed in early May the last few years, if we got a nice draw against the winners of Carlow and Wicklow or something it would be a tricky tie but we still should be well able for it and could gear towards a semi in June.