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And so another All-Ireland against Dublin ended with a crucial kick from the man whose sublime finish had us back here in the first place.

Anytime over the past few years that I have met, or spoken to Cillian O'Connor, I have found him to be in the vernacular of my home place, Belclare, which is a half-parish of Corofin, 100 per cent "spot-on". Or alternatively he might be described as “sound as a bell” or "sound as a pound" by a few of the older generation.

There is plenty of room for improvement for Mayo ahead of Saturday week's All Ireland senior final replay, is the word from the camp this week. Speaking on Tuesday evening Mayo's Keith Higgins said: "Maybe, you'd be looking sometimes at it a bit more critical, ourselves more than anything. But I still don't think we played well on Sunday to be honest with you. We kind of played alright in some patches [but] the performance wasn't as good as we expected it to be. It hasn't hit the heights we think it can hit, and so again it's probably even the Tipp game we played well for 20 minutes. It's about improving on the areas we let ourselves down on Sunday. There are a lot of areas to improve there, so that's the big focus to step up again for the next level of performance for me."

Anytime over the past few years that I have met or spoken to Cillian O’ Connor, I have found him to be in the vernacular of my home place, Belclare, which is a half-parish of Corofin, to be 100 per cent “spot-on”.

When Mayo needed a man to show the leadership in a clutch situation, their star man came good right at the death. Cillian O’Connor showed why he was picked by Stephen Rochford as his captain, when he created the space he needed to shimmy inside and drill the ball through the drizzle over the bar and electrify the Mayo faithful in Croke Park to haul his side level at the death.

It is past midnight on Wednesday night, going into the small hours of Thursday morning. My wife and the four kids are all tucked up and gone to dreamland for the past few hours. Only Caesar our faithful dog is keeping me company, as I start to type this column on why Dublin should win the All-Ireland final in a few days time. However, I am having strong flashbacks to the second of September in 2012 and the All-Ireland semi-final.

Connacht Championship quarter-final

It’s game eight of Mayo’s 2016 championship campaign and the biggest one of all, the All-Ireland final against the reining champions and hot favourites Dublin. Mayo are priced at 3/1, the Dubs are 4/11 while the draw is available at 10/1. In layman’s terms the bookmakers don’t see Dublin been beaten. The handicap betting is set at -3 points meaning the expert odd makers feel Dublin will win by about three.