All-Ireland football championship permutations Week 3: Clare and Sligo enter race for Sam, it's the Tailteann for Meath

After a weekend where ten championship games were played, the picture regarding the participants in the Sam Maguire race and the Tailteann Cup became a little clearer, with Clare and Sligo booking their spots in the All-Ireland round-robin, while Meath will be part of the secondary competition after their defeat to Offaly.

As always, we will start with the basics for the new All-Ireland championship format.

They are:

16 teams will qualify for the seeded four-team groups that comprise the All-Ireland SFC group stages.

Eight of those places are reserved for the provincial finalists. The next eight come from the final league rankings, which take promotion/relegation and league finals into account.

Although ranked 20th after the league, as last year's Tailteann Cup winners, Westmeath will take one of the 16 places.

And here are the Pot breakdowns for the All-Ireland at this point (one county from each pot will enter one of the four All-Ireland SFC groups):

Pot 1

Connacht SFC winner

Leinster SFC winner

Munster SFC winner

Ulster SFC winner

Pot 2

Connacht SFC runner-up

Leinster SFC runner-up

Munster SFC runner-up

Ulster SFC runner-up

Pot 3

Mayo

Roscommon

Tyrone

12th ranked team

Pot 4

13th ranked team

14th ranked team

15th ranked team

16th ranked team

To put more flesh on things, we know that as provincial finalists - Galway/Sligo in Connacht and Kerry/Clare in Munster - will either be in Pot 1 or Pot 2.

Roscommon, after their loss to Galway, in the Connacht semi, now go into Pot 3 with Mayo and Tyrone. The remaining spot there will be filled by either Monaghan, Dublin or Derry.

It will be Monaghan if they don't get to Ulster final; Dublin if they don't get to Leinster final and Monaghan reach the Ulster final; Derry if they don't get to a