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With just two league games under their belts for the 16 senior clubs in the county, the race for the Moclair Cup gets under way this weekend with eight games across the four groups in the Treanlaur Catering Mayo GAA senior football championship getting going to the whistle over Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

With all the furore, excitement, and stories from my recent visit to New York for the start of the Connacht championship I did not leave many column inches for the most important part, the match. It was amazing the amount of Mayo supporters who expressed concern to me before the team departed from Dublin for the Big Apple. I was regularly asked if they would win in New York, and the number of times I heard “they’ll hardly mess up, will they?” made me snigger to myself. Supporters were concerned after the performance against Derry in the League semi-final, but you were dealing with three in a row Connacht champions and double All-Ireland finalists here against a bit part team made up of a sprinkling of average county players and mostly of average club players. The result was never in question, but it took until the last kick of the game when Enda Varley goaled to seal my prediction of Mayo winning by at least 20 points. New York’s so called bigger players, Brendan Quigley and Ross Wherity, completely faded into obscurity as they were overwhelmed by Seamus O’Shea, Jason Gibbons, and Donal Vaughan. It was a difficult game to watch and even more difficult to talk about as New York had 13 men in their own half for long periods to basically try to keep the score down.

Mayo did the heavy lifting in first half in their 2014 championship opener, when they ground down the New York challenge with the minimal of difficulty. James Horan will have learned nothing new about his side, but will have been pleased to have been able to give some game time to likes of Alan Dillon who returned to Mayo colours for the first time since the All Ireland final as a second half sub, while debutant Diarmuid O'Connor marked his first senior bow with a well taken goal right at the start of the second half. The game also saw a little bit of history with the three O'Shea brothers on the field at the same time, for the first time when Conor O'Shea made his championship debut as a second half sub.

Mayo’s championship season will get underway on Sunday, thousands of miles away from home when they take on New York in the preliminary round of Connacht Senior Football Championship in Gaelic Park at 7.30pm Irish time.

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.

Cillian O’Connor remains the one injury doubt for Mayo from those who were available for selection last weekend for Sunday’s Allianz National Football League semi-final in Croke Park. The Ballintubber attacker, who had to leave the action after just 10 minutes in Elverys MacHale Park last Sunday, may not make it back into the starting line-up for this weekend’s game. The team is due to be announced at some stage today (Friday, April 11).

Derry travelled to Castlebar last Sunday to take on the home side in what was a crucial game for Mayo to see if they would qualify for the playoffs of the National league. I should have smelled a rat earlier in the week when the bookmakers had Mayo at an outrageous 1/16 to beat the Oak Leaf county. This game could have been a cracker but it turned out to be a damp squib. Derry fielded only one of their starting 15 which made us realise from the outset that they did not care about the result, we will only know for sure if Brian McIver got anything out of this game when we see the Derry line up on Sunday.

Had Jack McCaffrey’s late effort made its way between the posts at the end of a crazy, madcap, frantic and frenetic clash between last season’s All Ireland finalists to hand Dublin victory, it is doubtful Mayo supporters could have left Croke Park feeling any more deflated on Saturday night.

Mayo face into their final two regulation games of the Allianz National Football League over the next two weekends. Whether they will extended that league run until at least the semi-final stage on April 13 and potentially the final on Sunday April 27 (a week before the open their championship campaign in New York) will have a lot to do with how they get on tomorrow night against the Dubs. A win over the All Ireland champions would put them two points clear of the metropolitans and almost assure themselves of a spot in the last four, ahead of their final game at home to Derry in Elverys MacHale Park.

Mayo 4-12