What with all the off-field activity (of all shades and sorts) this week, it’d be easy to forget about the championship action that’ll be taking place at the weekend.  But the Queen will shortly be on her way back to Blighty on the BAe 146 and so normal life will resume … until Barack shows up on Monday and sends the place into another tizzy.

In the meantime, there’s the weekend’s championship action to think about, with matches taking place in all four provinces. So if you’re signed up for the championship mini-league (hosted by facetheball.com), it’s time to fill in your predictions ahead of throw-in on Sunday.

None of this weekend’s clashes look all that difficult to predict (they never do in advance, do they?), with Laois/Longford perhaps the one to give you most pause for thought.  Apart from that, it’s a case of deciding on margins of victory and how good you are in that department is likely to be the main thing that’ll determine where you’ll be sitting in the mini-league table on Sunday evening.