Sunday Tribune county ratings in football

[Bord na Mona man]

I was just flicking through the sports pages of it on Sunday...Since I wouldn't buy the Sindo and the rest of the papers are fairly poor.
Anyway they did their ratings of the football teams in Ireland.
Offaly were in 23rd place, tucked in behind Carlow.
Just ahead of the Waterfords, Wicklows and Londons.

Anyway, these ratings are generally horsesh1t and an excuse to use up page space.
But surely to jaysus people don't think we're that bad?
Would Carlow have beaten last year's All Ireland semi-finalists by 4 points for example?
We'll surprise a few people when we rampage through Leinster this year!

[Lone Shark]

Depends on how you measure us. When you factor in that we've won one championship game against any team they put in the top twenty in the last four seasons, you'd nearly ask how could we be any higher?

We have better footballers, as evidenced by the weekend, but we lose games, and that's what counts. I don't like it, and it was possibly exaggerated for the sake of effect, but realistically we're not entitled to call ourselves anything but a mid tier team in a mediocre province. I'd say about 17 would be near enough right.

Actually, for pig iron, here's how I would rank teams at the moment:

Tyrone
Kerry
Armagh
Mayo
Dublin
Galway
Down
Cork
Leix
Donegal
Derry
Meath
Fermanagh
Wexford
Kildare
Cavan
Offaly
Monaghan
Limerick
Wastemeath
Clare
Longford
Roscommon
Leitrim
Louth
Carlow
Sligo
Antrim
Wicklow
Tipperary
Waterford

[Bord na Mona man]

On another point. It's often easy to spot a new GAA bandwagon hopping journalist.
i.e. A soccer convert journo, or else a media studies graduate.
They'll always fawn over Leix and rate them 4th or 5th best in Ireland.
Just cos they're shiny and new, won a trophy in the new Croke Park, are on Vodafone billboards etc.

[Kevin]

Totally meaningless off season nonsense. The lower we are ranked the better. The more they think we've lost the spirit and fight back ability the better. Our recent results have been disappointing, but at least we've been in the games. With a little luck things might have been different, but they are what they are. We are a little short staffed at the moment. Gives our young'ns a chance to step up.

Looking forward to seeing how it goes.