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After blitzing their way through Connacht without much fuss the first test of Mayo's credentials from a side outside Connacht will come tomorrow when they square up against Donegal in Croke Park. Mayo joint managers, Noel Connelly and Pat Holmes, announced their starting 15 for the showdown on Tuesday this week, much earlier than they have done for their two other championship games, and the starting line-up showed no changes from the one that started against Sligo in the provincial decider.

This Saturday in Croke Park (6pm) the Galway footballers will have to produce one of their best performances in a few seasons to beat the 2012 All-Ireland champions and 2014 All-Ireland finalists Donegal, in their round four qualifier clash. 

The Galway footballers will have to get an early Mass this Sunday morning or have gone on Saturday evening as they face Cavan in Pearse Stadium at the unusual time of 12.45pm as part of an attractive double header with the hurlers who face Cork at 2.30pm.

In the last number of weeks a few big GAA stories have escaped inches in my column because of the drama in the drawn All-Ireland semi final between Mayo and Kerry, the subsequent replay, and last but by no means least, the performance of the referee in that replay. I am putting that to bed now. You have to take your hat off to Jim McGuinness, his philosophies, and his way of thinking. He has his team so well fine tuned it borders on professionalism. He had a five day training camp prior to the Dublin game and the same again in the lead up to Sunday’s All-Ireland final. This all comes at a considerable cost, and along with some players being flown from Dublin to Donegal by helicopter for training it must mean some very generous individual or individuals are bank rolling it (that is of course if it is all true).

At least one wish eventually occurred that I was hoping for as the four provincial winners are through to the semi-finals in the football championship, Mayo and Donegal by the skin of their teeth, Dublin and Kerry in a canter. It seems the day of having an All-Ireland winner that comes through the qualifiers is well and truly gone. Not since Kerry navigated their way in 09 have we had a winner through the back door. For the first time in GAA history the four provincial minor winners are also the same as the four provincial senior winners.

Mayo left Croke Park on Sunday evening with far more questions than answers, as a 14 man Derry team ran at them and right through them, into the National Football League final in a fortnight's time. For the second time in the space of a few weeks, Mayo had a man advantage and a decent lead, but they were unable to see the game out and came up short in Croke Park. When Fergal Doherty was shown a second yellow card and ordered off the field for a late challenge on Aidan O'Shea in the build up to Mayo's goal 24 minutes in, it should have been the staging post for Mayo's march to victory. But, they never got moving as freely as expected and Derry ran out deserving winners.

And then there were eight. Watching the qualifier between Tyrone and Meath and Ger Canning announcing that Donegal seem to be into the quarter final after a struggle against Laois, I promptly let my Donegal wife Rita know that Mayo could now get drawn against Donegal. I knew it would happen, it was written in the stars, a chance for this Mayo team to right what went wrong in last year’s All-Ireland final. They could have got an easier draw in the likes of Cavan but getting pitted against Donegal - the All-Ireland champions, the team that made us sick to the pit of our stomachs last September means there is little needed in the line of motivation and complacency is gone out the window. It also means not much chat in the Casey house this week. I hope and expect to have bragging rights at 5.30pm next Sunday.

Not too long after the final whistle on Sunday evening, Mayo will be heading in one of three different directions. Leap-frogging Cork into the semi-final round of the league, retaining their division one status and their league season coming to an end on Sunday, or falling through the trap door and into division two of the league for the first time since the mid-nineties (the early part of the 2000s saw division one divided into two different sections).

Belief is everything in sport and long before the GAA was heavily populated with sports psychologists, this current Donegal side always looked like their name was on the trophy irrespective of who they were playing in the All-Ireland final last Sunday. I do not think the intervention of any amount of psychology would have stopped them winning their second All- Ireland. For a combination of reasons they had acquired a belief that they would win this year’s title, unless maybe an exceptional team stood in their way. Mayo are a very good team but, unfortunately, just did not have a sufficient number of big powerful men in key positions throughout the field to deny this Donegal side. One line in particular could have done with a big strong ball winner. If we had a Michael Murphy at 14, then I believe Mayo would have walked the steps on Sunday evening as champions. That is how close it was. But we do not appear to have that extra jewel at the moment. The fact that the aforementioned Michael Murphy is half a Mayo man does not make it any easier to accept!

There’s something heart warming about Donegal. Their team ethic is not based on fancy individuality that can so often lead to failure, but on the values of hard, honest toil and a simple, effective game plan. They have a manager who doesn’t care in the slightest what the football fraternity think of him or his team. He has set out his stall and is sticking by it. The whole world was down on top of them last year, (myself included) because of their ultra defensive dour style of play. Jim McGuinness was vilified for tarnishing our ‘beautiful game’ with such an ugly conservative style of defensive system that saw supporters, including many from his own county, walk out in disgust from Croke Park, when Donegal missed a glorious opportunity to defeat a Dublin side that were there for the taking. In fact, I spent most of last summer hoping they would be beaten as I genuinely hated their style of play. The reality is, they have some fantastic forwards, last year, inexplicably, they utilised them so far from goal that they rarely got an opportunity to do serious damage to any opposition. Six points against Dublin in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final is a case in point. This year they are unquestionably easier on the eye and appear to have realised that they have the ability to be serious contenders for an All-Ireland title if they are prepared to play a more attacking expansive brand of football. I admire them for that and for the fact that they have refined their system which now has seen them score an average of 18 points per game in the five games they have played in this year’s championship. They have also retained their air tight defensive system, only conceding a single goal from open play. And to be fair Jim McGuinness deserves great credit for turning the fortunes of a county whose team, up to last year, were the party, fun loving boys of the inter-county scene.