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The weekend after the nation celebrated the 1916 Rising, Mayo are looking to stage their own rising in the U21 ranks and will head to the ground named after Countess Markievicz in Sligo tomorrow evening to do so. It has been seven years since Mayo last claimed the JJ Fahy Cup, in the same venue, beating Sligo 3-14 to 1-8 in the provincial decider.

Mayo booked their place in the Connacht u21 final for the first time in seven years in Páirc Seán Mac Diarmada on Saturday night thanks to a four goal haul in a 20 minute period either side of half time on a sun splashed evening.

It will be seven years this year since Mayo last claimed the Connacht u21 title. Since then Galway have gone on to claim two All Ireland titles at the grade and Roscommon have appeared in two All Ireland finals, while both of the Connacht minnows, Leitrim and Sligo, have appeared in provincial finals. In the last six u21 campaigns Mayo have managed just three wins out of nine games, all at the preliminary round stage, beating Leitrim in 2010 and 2015 and Galway in 2012 before they exited the competition at the next stage.

Michael Solan's Mayo u21s will face Donegal for the second week in a row, when they take on the Ulster men in the final of the North West Cup tomorrow in the Sligo GAA Centre of Excellence in Scardan. Both sides met last weekend in the third round of the competition in Letterkenny with the hosts scraping home by a single point on a scoreline of 1-9 to 1-8 in O'Donnell Park.

Three Neil Douglas goals eased Castlebar Mitchels to a 29th Mayo senior title on Sunday in MacHale Park, the Mitchels marksman along with Danny Kirby and Richie Feeney were too hot to handle for the Breaffy defence as their side ran out 13 point winners.

Since the last time that these two neighbours came together in the senior championship, Breaffy have won their two league meetings, a 2-13 to 0-7 win in 2014, and a 3-9 to 1-12 victory in the spring of this year. But it is the meeting before those two that was the last big one, with Mitchels claiming their 28th senior title on a rain soaked day back in 2013.

If Breaffy are going to claim their first ever senior county title, they are certainly going to earn it. After topping a group that included fellow semi-finalists Knockmore, they saw off arguably the fourth best team in the county in Garrymore in their quarter-final win. On Sunday they backed that up with a steamrolling of the defending county champions Ballintubber to set up a final on the bank holiday weekend against fellow local rivals Castlebar Mitchels. This will be a repeat of the 2013 final between the sides, with a few little angles thrown into the mix.

While Garrymore would have prepared for all eventualities as best they could going into this game, the prospect of Aidan O’Shea loitering behind his midfielders and closing things up at the back is probably one of the last things they would have expected to face on Saturday afternoon. O’Shea who was deployed as a target man full forward for Mayo all summer and was posted in a similar position in Breaffy’s last league game against Kilmaine a fortnight ago and his positioning would have caught plenty of people off guard who were in the county grounds for this game.