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We knew life in division one was going to be tough.

The shadow boxing and experimenting has come to a close, with the end of the FBD League last Sunday for Mayo. This weekend Mayo will make the trip to Clones in the reverse fixture of last year's National Football League opener which was won by the Farney county men in MacHale Park. The top division in the National Football League is a high intensity environment — Mayo want to hit the ground running and they will be targeting a win in this game.

After Wednesday night's win for Ballintubber over Hollymount-Carramore, we now know the four sides who will be competing in Sunday's semi-finals of the Mayo senior football championship. Defending champions Castlebar Mitchels still look the team to beat after their win over last year's finalists Knockmore. They haven't hit full tilt yet but they are still the leading lights in the county at the minute, but their opponents on Sunday Garrymore will have plenty to say about it before the game is over in MacHale Park.

A storming early second half performance from Ballintubber laid the foundations for their progress to this Sunday's Mayo senior football championship semi-final. Despite seeing Cillian O'Connor sent to the line with 15 minutes left for a second yellow card, Ballintubber were able to use all their experience to hold off their southern opponents down the home stretch and book a meeting with Claremorris in the final four.

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.

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.

It was close. Far too close and tense in the final 10 minutes for heart rates. But for Johnny Heaney's superb double goal-line block off Danny Kirby and Diarmuid O'Connor, and it is questionable whether Galway would have contained the Mayo charge in the last quarter.

Over the past six seasons Mayo have faced Galway five times in the Connacht championship, next Sunday's meeting in Pearse Stadium will be the sixth meeting in seven years. The most basic statistic from the previous five meetings is that Mayo have won four of those five meetings with Galway's solitary win coming in last year's meeting in Castlebar. In those five games Mayo have outscored Galway on a cumulative score of 9-69 to 4-53, unsurprisingly in those five games Cillian O'Connor has accounted for 30 of Mayo's 69 points.

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.