The draw for the third round of the All Ireland Senior Football Championship Qualifiers has been made, which puts us one step closer to knowing the final line-up of the Super 8s.
The draw is as follows:
Kildare vs Mayo
Clare vs Armagh
Leitrim vs Monaghan
Cavan vs Tyrone
Enda McGinley joined OTB AM this morning to look over the draw, and he believes that the sides coming through the Round 3 Qualifiers should be favourites over those that automatically went into the 4th and final stage(the beaten provincial finalists) of Super 8s qualification.
"Looking at the four teams coming into this from the provincial finals, there were heavy beatings for most of them. I think this(Carlow) was the last big banana skin, and Tyrone now have a very clear route to the Super 8".
"Everybody will be thinking the likes of Cork took a heavy beating, so their confidence won't be good. Laois, any team that gets that kind of a beating against Dublin in the Leinster Final traditionally always struggle after".
"Obviously Fermanagh, after so much hype with the Ulster Final then a bad beating there, they're going to struggle to just get on. These teams coming in are going to be low on belief and then coming in to face some of the big hitters in the game, that's going to be tough".
While McGinley favours the chances for the sides coming through the Qualifiers, he believes that Roscommon are the pick of the beaten provincial finalists, though they still won't have enough for the sides they'll face in the 4th Round.
"Roscommon are definitely the pick of those teams in terms of challenging, but at the same time any of them big teams, if they were faced with Roscommon to make the Super 8s I think they'd take that at the start of the year".
"Roscommon is by far the trickiest tie in that, but I would imagine that the likes of Kildare, Monaghan, Mayo, Tyrone, if they've come through this round they would fancy their chances against Roscommon".
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