It’s been a few weeks since I gave an update on how things are panning out in the predictions mini-league and, with a welter of qualifier ties having been played in the meantime, it’s no surprise that there’s been a fair bit of change in terms of who is where in the table compared to the last update.

As you can see from the table below, we have a new leader and I think you’ll agree, given the week that’s in it, that it’s rather appropriate that someone trading under the name Mortified should evict someone by the name of rayosilke from top spot.  But that’s not the main news in terms of movements in the table: what is is that four players have made significant upward progress and two of them, Pink Shnek (whom I know, he’s a good lad) and SixPointsUp, are now within spitting distance of top spot.  The latter is, of course, the winner of the NFL mini-league but, a bit like the real NFL winners, he had a bit of a nightmare start to the championship version.  Unlike the Kerrymen, though, he’s now hit top form so a league/championship double could well be on the radar for him.

With the final rounds of the qualifiers on this coming weekend and the All-Ireland series to come after that, there are now (barring replays) only eleven matches left to play in the championship (and hopefully we’ll be involved in three of this total) so most of the points to be gained (or not, as the case may be) are already on the board.  As a result, it looks like it’s too late for anyone to make a late charge from mid-table all the way to the top and so it’s fair to conclude that the winner will come from within the existing top quartet.  As well as that, with so few games to be played, the winner will be the one who not only calls the result the right way but gets the margins of victory right too.  No more than in the real championship, the fun starts now.