Mayo, Meath, Waterford, Cork, Fermanagh and Down, on the other hand, are going to have to work long and hard for their preliminary round and first-round victories in the hours ahead.

But each can do that.

That would mean two more decent sized shocks over the first two Sundays of the championship . . . three in eight days, with Waterford and Fermanagh displaying early smiles as wide as Brian Kavanagh's and the rest of Luke Dempsey's gutsy Longford football team.

The heads of mighty big teams are going to roll almost every single Sunday in 2007.

That's the surest prediction I'm willing to make this morning . . . but, just because the National league was as confusing as it was disappointing, and would have been left collapsed in a heap only for the excellence of Brian McIvor and his Donegal team, doesn't mean all of the columnists and analysts standing on the ditch, should be allowed to hedge their bets for the next couple of months or so, until the form and momentum of the key teams in each province becomes quite clear.

We've got to stick our necks out there too. Why the hell not! And if the lads in the Sunday Times and Sunday Independent, and the boys on The Sunday Game, are taking themselves very seriously and coming over all professor-like for the next few weekends it's because they haven't got a bull's notion who is going to win out, in even two of the four provinces. None of us do, not at the start of the summer of 2007 anyhow.

Me, I've gone on record on Newstalk during the course of this week, and stated that the provincial champions will be Laois, Monaghan, Cork and Mayo. That's the worst thing and the greatest thing about radio . . . if you decide to speak up like 'Old Moore', or even Nostradamus himself, then your predictions and forecasts can come back and visit you, alive and kicking, sounding fresh as a daisy, at any time of the day or year.

In Sunday newspapers, in comparison, including the Tribune, it's easy enough to sneak in and out, and announce who's going to win everything . . . and know nobody's going to hold onto the paper for four or five months.

But enough old guff!

We've too many games ahead of this afternoon and, like I've said, Louth are formally taking the covers off 'Year Two' of Eamonn McEneaney's reign in the earlier of the two games in Croker and with their side of the Leinster draw looking wonderfully inviting there's just no way they are going to allow Mick O'Dwyer cast any of his spells over this contest.

Anyhow, Micko still has the second weakest bunch of county footballers in the country at his fingertips, and even with the noisy arrival of Thomas Walsh from Carlow, Wicklow are still destined to be winning Tommy Murphy Cups pretty much every second year it seems.

It's desperately unfair that only Wicklow, from the four teams playing in the Leinster championship this afternoon, can be cast into that miserable pit of a competition. It's a great injustice. Wicklow have to win three games and make it all the way to a Leinster final in order to avoid that fate! It's wrong, very, very wrong, and it effectively means, Micko or no Micko, Wicklow must wear the leg irons of second-class citizens, and compete with those same weights on them.

Louth will go through, and two hours later Meath will join them, because Colm Coyle has exactly the right pedigree and know-how to see to it that John Doyle (far right) will hardly get room to breathe anywhere he goes in the Meath half of the field. If Doyle is bundled out of the game as a matchwinning threat, then the massive absence of Killian Brennan and Dermot Earley in the middle of the field will suddenly come home to overpower John Crofton's best laid plans for 2007.

The two big surprises of the day can definitely appear in Dungarvan and Clones. John Kiely is a sensible and rational football man who knows the hand he has been dealt in life by the Gods and the GAA, but he will be only dying to act as host to Paidi O Se's very young and vulnerable Clare team.

If the Hurneys and one or two of the other giants of men on the Waterford team really get into their stride, we could be talking about a big victory, by five or six points here, believe me. Or not! Who honestly knows? But I'm looking at Waterford winning by half a dozen points.

Charlie Mulgrew's last stand as Fermanagh manager, most probably, has to be a winning one . . . at least this afternoon. It doesn't matter that his little green men - and they are small (tiny compared to the size of men they grow in Waterford these days) . . . haven't won a competitive game all year.

Every last man in Charlie's dressing-room knows in his heart that if they do not do something more, if they fail to raise one last round of applause from their own folk, then the thrill and glory of their great performances three summers ago, in reaching the All-Ireland 'semis' . . . will be stored away as something freakish, and something which was never really meant to be believed.

Besides, Tyrone are down and out of luck. Too many of Mickey's Harte's heroes are injured, too many others are retired or, like Brian McGuigan, are being forced to think very seriously that it might all be over, and then there is Ryan McMenamin and Sean Cavanagh and Brian Dooher! All three need to be physically and mentally capable of carrying this Tyrone team on their backs, probably all through this game of football, and none of this trio have their form and their fitness aligned correctly to be able to carry out such on onerous task this afternoon.

It's too much to ask of these three amigos, too early in the season. And yep, this columnist is also looking at Mayo trotting down to Pearse Stadium and beating Galway, no problem. Everyone else says it's going to be so, so tight, but I wonder?

Why should these two always have to slug it out?

Mayo have a slightly stronger and tighter defence (and the scare factor has sort of gone from this Galway forward line, hasn't it? ), Heaney and Harte have lots more mobility in the middle of the field than their opposite numbers and, finally, which 'old head' up front would you put your money on to last 70 minutes, lead his troops, and score the equivalent of five or six points, Ja Fallon or Kevin O'Neill?

All else still being roughly equal or making little or no difference, a true captain's performance from O'Neill might be all that Mayo need to ensure they take off on another summer's roller-coaster.