KEVIN CASSIDY: Donegal are sitting pretty

I’LL be the first to hold my hands up and admit that I’ve had a mixed summer in terms of predictions with three of my four picks last weekend all falling flat on their face.

This season has been a nightmare in terms of trying to work out who may win certain games but I think that this is exactly what the football championship has needed and these new rules has helped steer us in that direction.

Take the Donegal and Monaghan game for example. In the past, if a team had been seven points up then that would have been curtains as the side in the driving seat would just shut up shop and there would be little or no space to manoeuvre scores.

Fast-forward to this season and you are never really beaten until that hooter goes, so from a spectator point of view, we have a fantastic product now at our disposal.

I’d like to start with for me what was the biggest shock of the weekend with Meath dumping out Galway.

At this point I would like to hold my hands up again and admit that I was wrong by predicting that Galway would win this year’s All-Ireland.

I watched Galway in a few of the early National League games and I just thought that their power, pace and sheer panel depth would be hard to touch this year but, in reality, once we hit the summer months they stuttered their way through the championship until finally being put to the sword last weekend.

From mid-April they just never looked cohesive and from the outside looking in, all doesn’t seem to be well in that camp.

What I mean by that is the reaction from some of the big players and then the counter-reaction of manager Pádraic Joyce by taking off his big players and leaders in vital championship matches.

It doesn’t really matter now because they’re gone and to be honest perhaps this group has missed their golden opportunity to reach the summit and what a terrible shame that is.

Meath were deserving winners and it was refreshing to see a team just cut loose and go after the win like they did so they deserve tremendous credit for doing so. Robbie Brennen has turned this group around and they are now in bonus territory in an All-Ireland semi-final where no one will give them a chance.

The other big shock of the weekend – if you want to call it that – was Kerry’s dismantling of Armagh on Sunday.

Armagh looked like a team who were getting stronger week-on-week and Kerry were a team who were under pressure from within, so last weekend’s game was massive in terms of finding out where the Kingdom were actually at.

If anyone doubted Kerry’s ability, especially now under the new rules, then having watched them at Croke Park last weekend we all now know that they will take some stopping.

The massive difference for me in terms of Kerry is that they have the ability to kick pass the ball way more than any other team and for me kicking the ball always wins big games.

When you get to the big stage, especially one like Croke Park, kicking is king so the more you can kick pass the ball out of your defence, the more opportunities you will create at the other end of the pitch and at the minute Kerry are head and shoulders above the rest in terms of that particular skillset.

We will go into these games in more detail next week but Kerry’s biggest problem is that they are now pitted against Tyrone who never fear anyone let alone Kerry so this is a dangerous, dangerous tie for the Kingdom.

Donegal will be the happiest this weekend given the nature of the draw.

Let me begin by saying that under no circumstances is anybody writing Meath off or underestimating their achievements as they have done tremendously well but for the GAA followers out there the hard facts are that if Donegal were given this option at the start of the year of beating Monaghan in a quarter-final and beating Meath in a semi-final to reach the decider then I think Jim McGuinness would have taken both your arms off.

Before we get stuck in to the games next week, I’ll have to put an awful lot of thought into these clashes because given my predictions last weekend, then I really need to up the ante for these big last-four clashes.