It’s Friday, it’s almost Saturday (and thanks be to The Lord and His Holy Mother for that) and with a full programme of NFL matches slated for the weekend it’s once more time to get all those predictions done.

First, the Setanta competition, which, in case you missed it last week, involves guessing the exact result of the match carried live on Setanta Ireland which is simulcast (see – I’m well up on my broadcasting terminology) in glorious high definition format on Setanta HD (just in case you want to see the zits on Canty’s nose or some such minute detail like that).  This weekend’s match is the meeting of Dublin and Cork under the lights at Croke Park and I’m planning on taking the kids to it, where we hope to see Jedward forming a lethal full-forward line with Bernard Brogan.

All you have to do to enter this competition is send me an email telling me who you are and what you think the result of the match at Croke Park will be and also, as a tie-breaker, what you think the result of tomorrow night’s Division Two game between Tyrone and Donegal (which will be shown on Setanta Ireland/HD after the Dublin-Cork game) will be.  Whoever comes closest to the actual result will go into the hat with the six other weekly winners for a draw in which the lucky overall winner will get a year’s subscription via satellite to Setanta Sports.  In addition, as I mentioned the other day, all of the weekly winners will also get a copy each of Breandan O hEithir’s wonderful book Over The Bar and, for that alone, it’s a competition worth entering.

If you’re one of the forty hopefuls in the mini-league hosted by facetheball.com, meanwhile, it’s also time to fill in all the predictions for this weekend’s Division One and Two games.  In this respect, you might find RTÉ’s weekend previews (which are often wrong – they go for Kerry in our one, by the way) and the odds being offered by Paddy Power (which are rarely generous – we’re 11/8 to scalp the Kingdom) to be of help in deciding which way to go.

The deadline for taking part in this fun and games is 5 pm tomorrow for the Setanta competition and midday tomorrow for the mini-league one.