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Mayo's preparations for their crunch tie with Galway on May 13 have gone to the next stage with Stephen Rochford tidying up his championship panel last week.

The champions Castlebar Mitchels got their defence of the Moclair Cup off to a winning start with a 15 point win, running out 2-18 to 1-6 over Ballina Stephenites on Saturday night in group one of the Mayo Senior Football Championship.

When these two sides come face to face on May 13 in Castlebar if there are half as many talking points as in this game, the paying punters will have got their monies worth.

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.

It looked that Mayo were going to get off to a winning start until Leitrim’s Brendan Gallagher punched the ball past Paddy O’Malley from close range deep into injury time to secure a draw in this FBD League encounter in front of 1,696 paying spectators in MacHale Park.

Mayo manager Stephen Rochford confirmed that he expects to be without two more of his front line players for the majority if not all of the upcoming national league campaign.

Title number 31 for Castlebar Mitchels will be one that will be remembered for a long time in the county town, it was their first three-in-a-row since the mid 1950s and it also saw them beat their most recent nemesis Ballintubber in the final for the first time after their near neighbours had beaten them in their three previous final meetings in 2010, 2011 and 2014.

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.

With last weekend's meeting of Knockmore and Castlebar Mitchels postponed and Ballintubber playing only their first league game after a postponement in round one, Breaffy moved to the top of the league table early doors with their second win in a row last weekend against Claremorris. They were made to fight hard for that win, with the south Mayo men sticking with them right throughout and James Shaughnessy's 10 point haul a very impressive return. Breaffy held on to win by two points thanks to Aidan O'Shea's second half goal being the decisive score.