THE real action gets underway this weekend as the championship swings around for another season.

We have enjoyed the last number of weeks getting back into the swing of watching live action once again, and we are all looking forward to the championship getting underway. Like I said last week when discussing the National Leagues and how teams fared, it’s fair to say that all provinces outside of Leinster will be extremely competitive this year.

If we start in Munster, Kerry are obviously the hot favourites but then when you take into consideration what Cork did to them last season and then the eventual winners Tipperary then it should make for an exciting championship down there. Kerry will be keen to bounce back with a vengeance and based on the latest outings you would have to fancy them to rule supreme once more.

In Connacht it will be once again a three-horse race with Mayo, Galway and Roscommon battling it out to become kings of the west.

At the beginning of the season I would have opted for Mayo purely based on last year’s exploits and with the introduction of a couple of new players that they brought through last season I would have felt that they would have been too strong for the other two.

Fast-forward a few weeks and with the news that sharpshooter Cillian O’Connor will be out for the foreseeable future and perhaps joined on the sidelines by his brother Diarmuid then now the whole pendulum swings in the opposite direction.

Galway have been disappointing in the league to date and it will be interesting to see if Pádraic Joyce can rally his troops in time for a big championship push.

The difficulty for Galway is that they face a tricky encounter with Roscommon as they travel to Hyde Park. Roscommon are always extremely difficult to beat at home and with the players at their disposal I just fancy Roscommon to edge it.

Without being disrespectful to the other teams in the Connacht Championship, I just don’t see enough quality in their ranks to cause an upset so for me it will boil down to Mayo or Roscommon.

If Dublin are taken out of the equation then the rest of the Leinster Championship becomes extremely competitive with very little between all teams. The likes of Louth under Mickey Harte and Offaly under John Maughan would fancy their chances of going on a bit of a run but unfortunately for all of those teams as soon as Dublin come into the picture it’s game over.

I said last week that as usual Ulster will be the most competitive province of all and I actually feel that that level of competitiveness has gone up a notch or two from last season based on the last few league games

You always had Donegal, Tyrone and Monaghan, who were joined at the top table last year by Cavan, but now you can actually add Derry and Armagh to the mix. Both of these teams have shown signs that perhaps the time has come for them to re-join the rest at the top table of Ulster football.

Over the next few weeks there will be some very intriguing classes and I predict a few surprises and bumps along the way.

We start this weekend with Donegal making the tricky journey to face the Mourne men in Newry. Down are extremely quiet of late with very little being said or written about them and under the guidance of Paddy Tally that can be dangerous.

Like most teams in Ulster, they are blessed with raw natural talent so the big question is have they worked hard enough on the structure and set up to compete with the likes of Donegal.

If you cast your mind back to last year’s encounter with Cavan, they absolutely tore Mickey Graham’s men to pieces with their searing peace coming from deep. They should have won the game easily but the worrying thing was how they collapsed and allowed Cavan back into the contest.

For Down to cause any sort of upset this weekend they would have to continue that relentless running from the first whistle to the last.

I expect Donegal to have too much for Down this week and with the returning Michael Murphy there to steer the ship, the Tir Chonaill county should have too much firepower for their opponents.

The big thing for my eyes this weekend from a Donegal point of view is how many of our injured players can we get back on the field. Games will be coming thick and fast and you need your key man on the patch at all times to get up to the pitch of championship football.

Donegal need the likes of Michael Murphy, Neil McGee and Eoghan ‘Ban’ Gallagher to be ever present in order to get to the top in Ulster once again.

It’s absolutely fantastic to be at this point with the championship days away, so let’s sit back and enjoy the action.