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Now that the dust has settled on the inter-county season for another year attention turns back to the local scene this weekend with the double header of replays in the Mayo Junior Football Championship on Saturday evening announcing the return to local action. The action will get under way at 6pm with the meeting of Ballycastle and Kilmeena, followed by the clash of Balla and Achill at 7.30pm.

Come 5pm on Sunday evening, Mayo's 10 game odyssey through the All Ireland championship will have come to an end (but don't discount a replay - the way this year has gone). Hopefully green and red ribbons will be hanging off the handles of Sam Maguire, and Cillian O'Connor getting ready to lift the old trophy high in the air in the hands of a Mayo man for the first time in 66 years.

All-Ireland final fever is here. I still have to pinch myself to contemplate that Mayo are back in the football showpiece again. Looking at Mayo's run to the final you'd almost forget that it started against Sligo in Castlebar on May 21. The ticket fiasco is still the same, however, with most Mayo folk willing to beg, borrow, or steal to get their hands on that elusive golden ticket. Some novel efforts took to Tinder looking for a female acquaintance, the only catch was they had to have a spare ticket for the game. The most desperate are offering their spouses in return for a match day pass, it's all part of the fun, it's all part of the build up.

There have been plenty of talk and plaudits for the attacking return for the Mayo full forward line of 1-10, 1-9 of it coming from play against Kerry last Sunday. While he only registered 0-1 of that total, the influence that Burrishoole's Jason Doherty had on Mayo's ability to get scores was far more influential than a scoreboard analysis will show at first glance.

Monday's All-Ireland SFC quarter-final replay ended in bitter disappointment for Roscommon as Mayo cruised to an emphatic 4-19 to 0-9 win at Croke Park.

There has been a seismic shift in football power in Connacht in the last four years. After Mayo's 17 point drubbing of Galway in Salthill in 2013 it looked like it would take the Tribesmen light years to make up the ground. After slowly narrowing the gap in 2014 (seven point Mayo victory) and 2015 (four point Mayo victory) they have now caught and surpassed us, beating us twice on the spin in crucial Connacht championship semi-finals.

Mayo will meet Sligo on Sunday week in Castlebar after the Yeats men survived their trip to the Big Apple defeating the home side by 1-21 to 1-13. For the life of me I could not get my head around all the talk that New York were going to beat Sligo and that this was their strongest ever team in the championship and an upset was on the cards. This theory was mainly based on the fact that they recruited a few big name players and also ran Roscommon to a single point last year and that Roscommon are perceived as a better team than Sligo.

Almost anything can happen this weekend in division one of the national football league, but there is one thing that Mayo need to see happen. Take at least a point from their game against Donegal and they can be assured of top flight football, simple as that. There are lots of other permutations and combinations that can see Mayo stay up, go down, or even end up in the league final as distant a possability that is.

Mayo will be looking to get back on winning ways on Sunday when Cavan come calling to Castlebar in round five of the league. This will be first meeting of the sides in a decade in competitive action, with a John O'Mahony managed Mayo seeing off the Breffni men in a qualifier in 2007.  There are a few survivors from that win still involved with Mayo today, with David Clarke and Andy Moran very much part of the Mayo side so far this year and Alan Dillon yet to return to the fold. Dillon and Moran contributed seven of Mayo's 19 points that day, with the Ballintubber man hitting 0-5 and Moran adding 0-2. A return of 19 points on Sunday would be something that Stephen Rochford would be very pleased as his attack have not exactly been lighting things up so far this season.

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.