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Castlebar will play their last game of the year tomorrow evening when they host league leaders Connemara in round nine of division 1A of the Connacht Junior League.

Mayo bookended their FBD League campaign by registering their first win of the new season against Sligo in James Stephens Park. But as Mayo manager Stephen Rochford said after the game; “That sort of performance won’t get you any points in Clones.”

Sligo are the only team on the minds of Mayo players and management as they prepare an assault on the 2017 Connacht championship against the Yeats County in MacHale Park on Sunday afternoon. Both Stephen Rochford and his captain Cillian O’Connor were quick to shoot down any notions of Mayo being talked up as Nestor or Sam Maguire cup contenders until those trophies were on the line in a given game. Until then the name of the game is entirely the opposition in front of them.

Mayo's 2017 championship gets under way on Sunday in Elverys MacHale Park against rank outsiders and recent conquerors of New York, Sligo. Niall Carew's men find themselves priced at 15/2 to win the game while, Stephen Rochford's charges are an unbackable 1/14 on. If you are silly enough to bet on a draw, it's available at 18/1. The handicap betting suggests that Mayo should win the game by around nine points. Sligo do have the advantage of having a game under their belts, albeit an energy sapping trip to the Big Apple, which they ended up winning comfortably. They did stay behind in New York for a few days training and returned to Ireland the Thursday after their game in Gaelic Park. It does take a few days to get over the jet lag so it is not ideal preparation for such a big game,

While the Mayo senior side have been consistently brilliant over the past few years, their junior counterparts have been just as consistent in recent times, having reached the last two All Ireland finals only to be beaten by Kerry in the final in Croke Park, they also reached the final of the 2012 edition of the competition only to be once again beaten by the men from the Kingdom, this time in Cusack Park.

They ‘will rank in history amongst the greatest teams that have contested the Championship’, so read the report of a contemporary journalist after witnessing Mayo rout Laois in the 1936 All-Ireland Football Final and claim the county’s first senior football championship. Mayo senior football was peaking that year. The planets had begun their alignment four years earlier when Mayo contested only their third All-Ireland final. A narrow loss to Kerry in 1932 was crushing but oil had been struck and it did not just flow, it gushed throughout the 1930s and Mayo fans bathed in it. The 1932 final was the incendiary event that sparked an era of magnificence in Mayo football. The green and red would eventually see out the decade with a record six consecutive National Football League titles won between 1934 and 1939. With three of the six NFL crowns secured by the first game of Mayo’s championship campaign in May 1936, the aligning planets must have appeared as leather footballs to the success-spoiled county.