THE LEAGUE OF Ireland table has functioned for weeks like some great work of art: you could lose an afternoon simply looking at it as it reveals to you some great, bewildering truth.
Shelbourne and Derry, for instance, have each won two of their last 11 games, and yet neither have dropped out of the top two in that time.
There is effectively one team on form – St Patrick’s Athletic – with nine teams sharing points in a hugely enjoyable act of socialist theatre.
Pat’s have won all of their last six games, meaning they’ve picked up just one point less in that time than Shels, Derry, and Shamrock Rovers combined.
Pat’s are 10% of the league but have picked up 22% of the points accrued by everyone across the last six matches.
Shamrock Rovers are the bookies favourites for the title, and yet are third and haven’t been top all year. Rovers have lost nine games this season – as many as they did in the last two seasons combined – and won 14 games, which is one fewer than they won in the Covid season of 2020, which was half as long as this one.
They can do no better than collect 61 points this season, which would be 11 points worse off than last season, 18 points worse than the season before, and 14 worse than the 2019 season, when they finished second to Dundalk.
Shels were fifth at this point of the season last year, but with only one point fewer than they have in 2024 as league leaders. They currently have 54 points, meaning the title will be won with no more than 63 points.
This season will be the lowest points total ever to win a 10-team, 36-league game season since the Premier Division was trimmed from 12 teams in 2018. The average number of points needed to win the league from then to last season – excluding the Covid season - has been just over 80 points, with Dundalk’s totals of 87 and 86 across 2018 and 2019 inflating that. Last season Rovers won the title with 72 points, though at the end of it all Stephen Bradley admitted Rovers’ title rivals had let them off the hook.
Goodness knows what everyone will tell themselves if Rovers go on to win the league this season given their potential maximum number of points this season is 61, which would have only have been good enough for fourth place in each of the last two seasons.
As we enter the final three games, Shels are two points clear at the top but only six points ahead of Sligo Rovers in sixth place, meaning they can legitimately dream of winning the title while also fret about missing out on Europe entirely.
Shels are clearly in a far better position than they were when they bobbing about the First Division a few years ago, but still, fans would be forgiven for thinking this is a kind of elongated torture. Their run of form would normally have killed the unbearable hope of winning the league weeks ago, but everyone else has kept it alive.
Derry might yet end up winning the league and cup double and list this as one of the greatest seasons in their history, which will feel bizarre to any of the supporters who has lived through it, particularly those who booed the team off against Sligo in midweek.
Rovers, as mentioned above, are having a dreadful league season by their own standards under Bradley, and yet they might complete a remarkable five-in-a-row while playing European group stage football.
Newly-promoted Galway fumbled two points at the last second against Dundalk earlier this month to leave fans worrying about missing out on Europe. Imagine being promoted and then ending the season disappointed at having pipped for a European spot? Or consider Sligo Rovers, who are two points from those European spots with a goal difference of minus seven?
This stage of the season is not supposed to have so many complex and conflicting emotions: most fans are resigned to their end-of-season fate by now.
And while this may be a kind of agony for the supporters involved, it is very clearly brilliant for the neutral. The league has needed a proper title race for years, and can’t be said to have had one since Dundalk imploded and cleared the way for Rovers’ eminence.
But now, with three games to go, is anyone confidently ruling Pat’s out of winning the title? Would you be sure that Shelbourne will finish in the top three? Are Galway or Sligo really not going to make Europe?
The table does beg a question, though: have standards fallen in the league?
The fact that nobody has been able to capitalise yet on Shels’ collapse in form following the exits of Will Jarvis and Gavin Molloy would suggest that the chasing pack are not as good as they used to be.
But on the other hand, Rovers are in the Conference League group stages while Pat’s were a round away from joining them, having come through the far more difficult path that is not reserved for domestic champions.
Perhaps points totals are low not because the top sides have regressed, but because the middle classes have risen to meet them. Certainly Galway and Waterford have proved to be the strongest promoted sides in some time.
Galway have 50 points and Waterford have 44 with three games to go: of all the other promoted sides across the last four 36-game seasons, the best points total was Drogheda’s 44 in 2021. And while Dundalk will finish last this year, they will do so with the highest points total of a bottom-placed side since the league switched to 10 teams.
But really, these questions about standards and What The League Title Says About Us are primarily fodder for journalists or post-mortems. For now, the final three rounds of the season are to be enjoyed for the chaos that they will inevitably bring.
And so, to the idiotic art of prediction. Who is going to do win this thing?
Shelbourne have a two-point cushion and their final three games are at home to Waterford and Drogheda before a delicious finale away to Derry.
Derry have the toughest run-in of the top three: away to Dundalk and then Pat’s before the final game against Shels.
Rovers, meanwhile, are away to Drogheda and then away to Dundalk before they finish at home to Waterford.
Pat’s and Galway play each other tonight, where the loser will be out of contention and a draw will probably put both out of the running.
Rovers look to have the easiest run-in, but they have European commitments to deal with next week too, along with a curiously patchy record in Louth. They must also contend with a Drogheda side who still have hopes of catching Bohs in eighth place and avoiding the relegation play-off.
So having crunched the numbers/flung potential results at the wall, this writer predicts that…Shamrock Rovers will win the league on goal difference ahead of Pat’s and Shelbourne.
Rovers might drop points against Drogs but they’ll likely face a relegated Dundalk next week before closing at home to a Waterford side alone in having nothing to play for at this stage of the season. Let’s give them seven points from their final three games, taking them to 59.
A final-day draw between Derry and Shels would be the mutually assured destruction from which Rovers would benefit. Shels have to beat Waterford tonight, but a draw away to Drogs and then a draw against Derry would take them 59 too, but their goal difference is three inferior to Rovers’. Only Galway and Dundalk have scored fewer goals than Shels this season, so they may struggle to make it up.
While Derry should beat Dundalk tonight, form dictates they will lose to Pat’s, meaning they would finish on 56 in the event of a final-day draw against Shels.
And what of Pat’s? They finish with Galway (H), Derry (H) and Sligo (A), and they presently look like they can win all three. That would take them to 59, and their goal difference is currently only two worse than Rovers.
Galway and Derry have two of the three-best defensive records in the league, though, so Pat’s may not be able to make up the two-goal difference gap to Rovers.
Or, y’know, maybe they will, because honestly, who knows?
So if all plays out as we are predicting – and it won’t – we have a final league table in which Rovers, Pat’s and Shels all finish on 59 points, and to be split on goal difference.
This writer predicts Rovers to just shade it ahead of Pat’s in second and Shels in third, with Derry fourth on 56 points and guaranteed Europe regardless of whether they win the Cup or not.
To continue this misbegotten art of prediction: we have Galway finishing fifth (with a projected 54 points) with Sligo sixth (52), and Waterford seventh (45). We reckon Drogheda might draw with Rovers and Shels before beating Dundalk on the final day, which would take them to 38 points…but we are giving Bohs a single point in the run-in – a draw with Waterford – which would mean they too finish on 38 points and would avoid the relegation play-off on goal difference.
That first and ninth place would be decided on goal difference would be a fitting finale to a berserk year, but we should keep in mind the iron law of the 2024 season: now that it has been predicted, it won’t happen.
