1943 to 1948 - six consecutive years in Gaelic Football that represented the longest run of All Ireland finals without a Leinster team being involved. The second longest such run started in 2002, and unless either Meath or Dublin do the honours over the next two weekends, this unhealthy run for Ireland's most populous province will continue, matching the record set in the emergency. Having said all that, though at the start of the year no one would have expected Meath to be in an All Ireland semi final, never mind favourites, it looks like the run will be broken by 5pm this Sunday. The injury to James Masters has robbed Cork of their main scorer, and while the Nemo Rangers marksman has had a much more moderate All Ireland series after some great displays in the Munster Championship, he was still more or less guaranteed to chip in with two or three scores from play. Donncha O'Connor will probably make a good fist of covering Masters' dead ball duties, but even so it looks unlikely that Cork will be able to raise the fifteen or so flags required to win, thus making Meath reasonable value at Ladbrokes price of 4/6. All that said, 4/6 is not a price to everyone's taste, so we're going to look for other ways to exploit the absence of Masters to cash in. Looking ahead to possible tactics employed, Billy Morgan will have to come up with a very different strategy without his forward leader, and most likely he'll try to get Michael Cussen involved by directing a lot more high ball towards the edge of the square. This worked well in the Munster final, though the big man has struggled to get his teeth into matches since then. Working off this basis, Donncha O'Connor looks like an excellent bet at 9/2 to be Cork's first goalscorer in the match. Darren Fay is too good and too experienced to allow Cussen to field clean ball over him or to manoeuvre past him, but he's not superhuman and there isn't a full back in the game who could go 70 minutes without allowing Cussen to break a ball or two down for his corner men to feed off. O'Connor is almost certain to be the primary beneficiary of this and the 9/2 is a price well worth taking. Our final bet this weekend is in the minor match beforehand, where Kerry look way too strong for Galway. Most observers of this year's Connacht final felt that Roscommon were the better team on the day and only Galway's ability to grab goals saved them, while Carlow were by far the weakest team of the eight in the quarter final draw and Galway's big win over them in Tullamore doesn't really tell us anything about their real ability. Obviously they have plenty of potential, but Tyrone were a really tough opponent for the Kingdom and Kerry still dug deep to come back from behind and beat the Ulster Champions. That win makes Kerry clear and worthy favourites for this match, and splitting your stakes on Kerry to win by 7-8 points at 9/1 and by 9-10 points at 14/1 makes great sense in what could be a comfortable victory for the Munster lads. TO PLACE YOUR BETS, CLICK HERE NOW LADBROKES Tweet

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