NFL Division 4 2017

[Croí na hÉireann]

Outright Betting:
Westmeath 11/10
Wexford 5/2
Limerick 7/2
Carlow 14/1
Wicklow 16/1
Leitrim 16/1
Waterford 18/1
London 150/1

To be Promoted:
Westmeath 2/5
Wexford 4/5
Limerick 11/10
Carlow 4/1
Leitrim 5/1
Waterford 11/2
Wicklow 11/2
London 33/1

It'll be a travesty if we don't win this division, you'd imagine Banty will have Wexford fired up to give us competition for the title. History would dictate we'll be on the move again this year as since the current league format was introduced in 2008 we have only once competed in the same division in successive years.

2008 Div 2
2009 Div 1
2010 Div 2
2011 Div 3
2012 Div 2
2013 Div 2
2014 Div 1
2015 Div 2
2016 Div 3
2017 Div 4

So unless Kilkenny are opening up Div 5 we should be going up this year.

[From the Bunker]

Limerick and Wexford are the sticky ties for Westmeath and Promotion. Other than that it will be a disaster if they don't win promotion.

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

Good result for Carlow today. Johnny Magee struggling with Wicklow, big win for Banty.

[Give and Go]

Carlow gave Westmeath one hell of a fright and unlucky not to get the second point. Going to be a tough division.

[Croí na hÉireann]

Carlow gave Westmeath one hell of a fright and unlucky not to get the second point. Going to be a tough division.

Was a very fired up Carlow alright, none more so than the Maor Foirne. Overstepped the line multiple times, yapping at the Westmeath line, yapping at the Westmeath players and even pushing them on a couple of occasions. Should have been put in the stand instead of the multiple warnings he got.

Was a great test for Westmeath though, put to bed any notions we'd have it easy in this division. Carlow very defensive but they played it well and I think we'll encounter a lot of setups like that in this division. Goals killed us. Bryan did well in goals I thought apart from the one brain freeze where he kicked it straight to the corner forward that they got the penalty from. The ref had a brain freeze for the other one. Carlow were attacking and Gaughan was dragged to the ground right in front of the ref while he was trying to get back. Then not only did the ref not give a free out but Carlow managed to work the ball in and stick it in the top corner. Then to compound matters he went and gave Gaughan a black card to everyone's bewilderment.

Apart from that was a very enjoyable game on a super day for football in early February. Corcoran and Loughlin got a quick taste for senior football and didn't last the first half. Gaughan was the best of the substitutes until the ref entered the twilight zone. Sharry got on a lot of ball and delivered some nice kick passes inside. Didn't get enough of it in there though as by the time we got our heads up Carlow had filtered back the bodies. Jimmy Dolan got his customary goal and was unlucky not to get another in the first half after ghosting in behind. Have to win in Limerick next weekend.

[Catch and Kick]

Carlow gave Westmeath one hell of a fright and unlucky not to get the second point. Going to be a tough division.

Was a very fired up Carlow alright, none more so than the Maor Foirne. Overstepped the line multiple times, yapping at the Westmeath line, yapping at the Westmeath players and even pushing them on a couple of occasions. Should have been put in the stand instead of the multiple warnings he got.

You're being hard on him. He is entitled to come on the pitch during a break in play. Was he not provoked into verbals - Westmeath have a bit of a reputation for sledging....including your star player who kicked a ball at said maor foirnne after the game.

[Croí na hÉireann]

Carlow gave Westmeath one hell of a fright and unlucky not to get the second point. Going to be a tough division.

Was a very fired up Carlow alright, none more so than the Maor Foirne. Overstepped the line multiple times, yapping at the Westmeath line, yapping at the Westmeath players and even pushing them on a couple of occasions. Should have been put in the stand instead of the multiple warnings he got.

You're being hard on him. He is entitled to come on the pitch during a break in play. Was he not provoked into verbals - Westmeath have a bit of a reputation for sledging....including your star player who kicked a ball at said maor foirnne after the game.

No chance. He's entitled to come on to the pitch, never said he wasn't. He's not entitled to have multiple goes at the Westmeath line (manager, doctor, water carrier, basically whoever happened to be nearest for him to direct his ire at), he's not entitled to mouth at the Westmeath players as he runs past them and he's certainly not entitled to come on push and remonstrate with the Westmeath players. He got at least four warnings from the officials regarding his conduct and should have been put in the stand at half time. He puts Rory Gallagher when he was on the line with Jimmy McGuinness in the ha'penny place.

[Catch and Kick]

I think counties who have dropped down from Division 3 make the assumption they will easily get out of the basement division. It took Antrim two years, Wexford are down for 2nd year now; Limerick and Westmeath have just come down.
It is a dog fight. Highly competitive. Any of the teams that are not on the radar are capable of delivering a knock out punch!

[stevecw]

Was at the game on Sunday and as a Carlowman have to be happy coming away with a draw against the league favourites, especially with an injury time goal. But still feel like it was a game we could have won.
After a nightmare 1st 2 mins where we went 1-1 to 0 down, we owned the rest of that 1st half. Kicked some crazy amount of stupid wides. It was 1-4 to 1-3 at ht but we kicked 7 wides to Westmeaths 1. Should have been much further ahead.
2nd half Westmeath made changes and it was a much more even game, their tactic of long ball into ff line got some success for a while.
We brought on 2 scoring forwards with pace near the end instead of the managers son & another workhorse who won't score and straight away we levelled it up. Then Westmeath got a very dodgy goal, it looked like a square ball all the way.
Luckily for us Westmeath were naive enough to allow us put a great move together and Shane O'Neill only on the pitch making his league debut scored a cracking goal to level it.

For Division 4 it was a quality game, some great long range scores by both sides. The ref bottled out of giving Heslin & a couple of others black cards and waited till injury time to finally give one. The Carlow coach Poacher is exactly what we need, but can see how opposition fans & teams will hate him. He may reel it all in a bit as i'd imagine other refs might send him off.

[Farrandeelin]

It will be interesting to see how Michael Moyles gets on in the Leitrim set-up. He was trainer with my club's seniors last year and they reckon he was the reason they got to the county final. I'd like to see them promoted.

[Unlaoised]

Carlow could surprise a few people in this League ...They were going very well in winter training and everyone seems to behind O'Brien.

[Croí na hÉireann]

D. Bryan
J. Gonoud
K. McGuire
M. McCallon
J. Dolan
F. Boyle
D. Lynch
P. Holloway
G. Egan
J. Egan
P. Sharry
D. Corroon
K. Martin
J. Heslin
C. McCormack

Westmeath mean business this weekend. Strong team named. Hopefully more than Paul Sharry does themselves justice this Sunday.

[macdanger2]

Bad result for carlow after a decent start last week

[Croí na hÉireann]

Bad result for carlow after a decent start last week

Yeah, that was an eyebrow raiser alright. They were always going to struggle to replicate the intensity they brought to Mullingar but still thought they would pull away.

Good win for Westmeath down in Limerick, all the leaders on the team stud up and performed, Sharry, Heslin, Ger Egan, Martin, Dolan, Holloway. The bench pulled us away in the end, gap was down to 4 points around the 60th minute. Kickouts kept them in it, we let them go short all day and never got a hand on them at all. We fared worse though at our own kickouts, there was a spell there in the second half where every one found a Limerick man. Decent teams will absolutely hammer us if we continue to replicate that, we have no effective kickout strategy at all.

[Croí na hÉireann]

Another competent performance from Westmeath yesterday, always looked in charge despite Leitrim getting back to within 4 points early on in the second half. Heslin was good inside, Martin needs to become more of a scoring threat if he's going to remain in there beside him. Holloway looks like making center back his own and Gonoud kept Mulligan very quiet I thought. McCallon in the other corner looking very assured too. Kickouts were an improvement on the last day but there were still a few Garryowens in there. We dominated the middle third and seem to be working hard on turning the ball over as we caught Leitrim in possession numerous times. Beat Waterford next week should see us promoted with home games against Wicklow and London to come. Away game against Wexford should be a good test of where we really are.