All-Ireland football championship permutations Week 4: Pots all but confirmed ahead of draw

The provincial final line-ups have been confirmed, the seedings have been mostly decided and the draw takes place on Tuesday – the All-Ireland round-robin series has quickly come into focus.

The Tailteann Cup line-up has now also been completed, so all there is left to do is decide who is for Pot 1 and who is for Pot 2 in the main race.

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 (beaten by Louth in the Leinster quarter-final) 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

Galway/Sligo winner

Dublin/Louth winner

Clare/Kerry winner

Armagh/Derry winner

Pot 2

Galway/Sligo loser

Dublin/Louth loser

Clare/Kerry loser

Armagh/Derry loser

Pot 3

Mayo

Roscommon

Tyrone

Monaghan

Pot 4

Donegal

Cork

Kildare

Westmeath

So over the next couple of weekends, we will see the final Pot positions decided as Sligo and Galway meet in Connacht, Derry and Armagh clash in Ulster, Louth come up against Dublin in Leinster and All-Ireland champions Dublin face Clare in the Munster final.

If we were to use the bookies' predicitions as an indicator, that would leave Pot 1 containing Galway, Dublin, Derry and Kerry and Pot 2 would have Sligo, Louth, Armagh and Clare.

That would undoubtedly mean Pot 2 was the weakest of the