All-Ireland football championship permutations Week 2: Another big name for Pot 3

Week two of the football championship may have been low on quantity but it was high on quality with Monaghan and Tyrone serving up an Ulster championship classic while Derry also served a reminder of their provincial class with a routine win over Fermanagh on Saturday evening.

With only two games played [there will be 10 matches next weekend], the impact on the Sam Maguire race and the Tailteann Cup was fairly minimal, but it's worth looking at the lay of the land.

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

They are:

And here are the Pot breakdowns for the All-Ireland at this point:

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

Loser of Roscommon/Galway

Tyrone

12th ranked team

Pot 4

13th ranked team

14th ranked team

15th ranked team

16th ranked team

There is some confusion that if Westmeath reached the Leinster final that would somehow open up another spot, but a place is only reserved for the Tailteann Cup winners if they haven’t already qualified. So, Westmeath will be taking the place of a higher-ranked team regardless and making the Leinster final would just mean a higher seeding for them in the group phase.

The top 16-ranked teams from the league were: 1. Mayo, 2. Galway, 3. Roscommon, 4. Tyrone, 5. Kerry, 6. Monaghan, 7. Dublin, 8. Derry, 9. Armagh, 10. Donegal, 11. Louth, 12. Cork, 13. Kildare, 14. Meath, 15. Cavan, 16. Fermanagh.

We’ll start with the easy part, Fermanagh, despite being promoted from Division 3 this season, will return to the Tailteann Cup given that two of Clare, Limerick, Sligo or New York are guaranteed to overtake them on the