A new season. A new league. A new championship. New aspirations and hopes. New managers. New teams. And a new idea.
Welcome to the first blog post on GAArankings.net – a new attempt to try and identify exactly where each county lies in the pecking orders of football and hurling, each and every week of the season.
We won’t go into too much detail here about the basis for the calculations – there’s a whole separate page you can read if you want to delve into the mathematical nitty-gritty. Likewise, there are About and FAQ pages which might answer any other inquiries you have.
For now, we’ll just start with our GAA Elo rankings for inter-county gaelic football teams at the beginning of the 2015 National Football League:
| 1 | Kerry | 1972 |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Dublin | 1891 |
| 3 | Donegal | 1831 |
| 4 | Mayo | 1825 |
| 5 | Cork | 1679 |
| 6 | Tyrone | 1636 |
| 7 | Monaghan | 1585 |
| 8 | Kildare | 1527 |
| 9 | Derry | 1475 |
| 10 | Armagh | 1466 |
| 11 | Meath | 1423 |
| 12 | Galway | 1375 |
| 13 | Down | 1370 |
| 14 | Laois | 1346 |
| 15 | Roscommon | 1345 |
| 16 | Tipperary | 1250 |
| 17 | Cavan | 1245 |
| 18 | Louth | 1224 |
| 19 | Wexford | 1151 |
| 20 | Westmeath | 1114 |
| 21 | Sligo | 1064 |
| 22 | Clare | 1054 |
| 23 | Fermanagh | 1046 |
| 24 | Longford | 1040 |
| 25 | Limerick | 1006 |
| 26 | Wicklow | 929 |
| 27 | Antrim | 895 |
| 28 | Leitrim | 865 |
| 29 | Offaly | 843 |
| 30 | Waterford | 715 |
| 31 | Carlow | 636 |
| 32 | London | 606 |
| 33 | New York | 364 |
| 34 | Kilkenny | 147 |
The reason we don’t include pre-season competitions like the FBD League and O’Byrne Cups, in case you’re wondering, is because those competitions also involve college teams – and as we don’t intend to rank and rate college sides, it makes no reason to adjust a county team’s rating based on a game against a college team.
The top-ranked 32 teams of those 34 are all in action over the opening weekend – and there’s plenty of scope for teams to hop up and down those ratings as the League progresses.
Our intention is to post twice (or four times) a week here – once recapping each weekend’s results in each code, and once previewing the following weekend’s games and the potential changes it might mean to each code. Hurling updates will begin in two weeks when the National Hurling League is about to begin (and, truth be told, we think the hurling rating system has a kink that needs fixing).
But for now, we leave you to ponder, argue, inquire, debate, and enjoy.
Feel free to comment below, or tweet us @GAArankings (or @gavreilly) with your gripes, questions, observations and craic.
And let the games begin.