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Mayo got over their first hurdle of the championship season with a nine point win over Sligo in MacHale Park on Sunday afternoon, but Stephen Rochford will be looking for a big improvement from him his side come their meeting with Galway next month.

There was more than an air of hope around the county last week that Mayo could go to Croke Park and drive a knife into the heart of Dublin's 32 game unbeaten run in their own back yard. But from within minutes of the ball being thrown in, those hopes were proved to be idle pleasures of an early spring day dream.

While David Clarke's intervention to stop a couple of goals going past him on Saturday took plenty of deserved plaudits in an excellent display, from the kicking tee the Ballina man also had an excellent night, Mayo won all but four of the kick-outs they took against Monaghan, with Clarke quick off the tee on most of his restarts finding his men close by.

The start of the National Football League on Saturday evening will see thousands flock into MacHale Park to see the new season get under way properly. The league is often seen as time for guys to be given a chance to impress in the early rounds and stake their claim for a place later on in the year. But is this really the case?

This one is hard to comprehend,very hard. Some are harder to take than others. This defeat is pretty difficult to take. Our 1996 loss to Meath is forever etched in my memory for all the wrong reasons, it's very similar to last Sunday.

And breathe. There is no word in the English dictionary to describe what went on last Sunday. Mayo produced their gutsiest performance ever to snatch a draw against raging hot favourites and current champions Dublin in Croke Park in the All-Ireland final. The tone was set long before throw-in as the teams entered the field. I happened to be on the sideline doing a piece with Radio 1 as I watched Stephen Cluxton lead his team out to a deafening roar. I was left stunned to see Cillian O'Connor burst out the tunnel through the Dublin players, followed closely by Aidan O'Shea and the rest of his team mates. Misinformed initially, I was told Mayo lay in wait for Dublin to ruffle their feathers. The reason for this coming together was the fact that Dublin were meant to enter the field at 2.56 and Mayo at 2.58. This clash occurred at 3.02.

When Mayo needed a man to show the leadership in a clutch situation, their star man came good right at the death. Cillian O’Connor showed why he was picked by Stephen Rochford as his captain, when he created the space he needed to shimmy inside and drill the ball through the drizzle over the bar and electrify the Mayo faithful in Croke Park to haul his side level at the death.

The All Ireland quarterfinal is where Mayo wanted to be when the season threw in and they have got back there, they have taken a somewhat more circuitous route than they would have hoped, but that goal has been achieved. Mayo's championship form has been patchy all year, no more so than last weekend when they mixed the good with the bad, but they still got the result if not the full performance, they wanted to get there.

Stephen Rochford has named his first championship starting team for Mayo this lunch time, Rochford has handed Ballina Stephenites attacker Evan Regan his championship debut in this game and has named nine of the side who started Mayo's All Ireland semi-final replay defeat to Dublin in the starting 15. The players coming into the side who didn't start that day are Brendan Harrision, Kevin Keane, Patrick Durcan, Jason Gibbons, Evan Regan and Conor O'Shea. Dropping to the bench from that clash are Seamus O'Shea, while Ger Cafferkey, Donal Vaughan, Chris Barrett, Barry Moran and Diarmuid O'Connor aren't part of the match-day 26. There had been doubts of the fittness of O'Connor, Barrett, Moran and Ger Cafferkey ahead of the game.

Seven years ago, Tom Parsons was the last Mayo man to lift the JJ Fahy Cup when he captained Mayo to win the Connacht U21 title against Sligo. It has been a rollercoaster few years in between for the Charlestown man, and last Sunday he captained Mayo once more, this time for the first time he led out the senior side for their win against Roscommon in Hyde Park. "For me that's something magic, you know, I mean three years ago I was up in Croke Park on Hill 16 looking down at the boys as a supporter, it's something magic to captain this team any day. It's the first time that I got to captain the Mayo senior team in any competition and to come up here and get a win, it was a big one for us."