Setanta Cup - 1st Up Glentoran

It's been 12 weeks since Derry's last competitive match in the final of the FAI Cup, where we all know they came out 3-2 victorous winners against St Pat's in Lansdowne Road.

Our first competitive match is in the Setanta Cup, where we have again been selected to play in the toughest group. This year the group consists of ourselves and Drogheda United from the League of Ireland and Linfield and Glentoran from the Irish League.

First up in the cup is Glentoran away. Glentoran are currently mid-season and have already played 11 competitive matchs in 2007, 4 Wins, 2 Draws and 5 losses, they currently sit 3rd in the Irish League 6 points behind Linfield. Both Glentorn and Linfield were in our group last year and against the Glens, we won 3-1 at home and lost 1-0 away. So hopefully come tomorrow night there'll be pay back for the defeat last year.

There's a squad of us heading up from Dublin for the match, and it will be my first time in the Oval, so hopefully we get the right result to talk about on our way back down.

Setanta Cup Predictions
To make it interesting and to try and raise some funds for the Dublin Supporters Club, I decided to run a Setanta Cup Predictions competition. We have 20 people entering, 18 predictions in so far, just waiting on the other two coming in tomorrow. So far, out of the 18, Derry are the firm favourites with 13 people saving they'll win the cup, 2 go for Cork, 2 for Linfield and 1 for Drogheda - although this might be slightly biased as most of the entries are coming from Derry fans.

Full predictions can be found here Setanta Cup Predictions . To view the file choose the FREE option to download, wait until the timer runds out, enter text and press enter to download. Out of 19 predictions in for tomorrow nights games we have 11 people going for a Derry win, 3 for a Glentoran win and 5 for a draw, with the favourite scoreline being Derry winning 2-1.

Bring it on, it's been a long wait for the start of the new season, but we are now less than 24 hours away, and hopefully we can build on the last 2 seasons and Pat Fenlon can continue his winning ways back winning the league.

C'mon the Candystripes

Match report and crack from the trip up in Belfast to follow in a few days time.