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They came in their thousands and thousands across the Atlantic. Flights from New York, Shannon and wherever else possible carried the faithful in their droves.

The rain poured, the wind blew a gale and the Rossies went home with the bacon.

Just before I was about to hit send on last week's column I deleted one of the opening lines 'Beware- this game is fraught with danger'.

There is very little that can be said about the Mayo faithful that has not already been said or seen on social media or the RTE news over the past few days.

Winning the national league title at the end of March is not the end goal for the Mayo team - as the next step on its journey gets under way next Sunday - in as far flung a championship location as you can get - in Gaelic Park, in the Bronx, in New York. Rather, continuing to build and develop the fundamentals they worked on during the league over the summer - is what James Horan is looking to see over the next few months.

The club championship got under way and took centre stage last weekend. All senior games went ahead on Saturday evening when playing conditions were nothing short of atrocious, especially in the coastal venues in the county. The bizarre fact that neither Charlestown nor Belmullet registered a single score between them while playing against the hurricane in Belmullet was testament to how strong the breeze was.

All 16 runners and riders in this year's Mayo Senior Football Championship have been waiting for this weekend to arrive for a while now. Saturday will see a full slate of action taking place all over the county, with Ballintubber the defending champions the side to beat again this year.

With our league success still digesting, the attention now turns to preparing for an assault on the Connacht championship and then hopefully the All-Ireland series.

Days like this don’t come around too often and when they do it is something to be savoured and the thousands of Mayo supporters who made yet another pilgrimage to Croke Park made drank up every moment of this one after the final whistle.

With ten minutes to go last Sunday, James Horan introduced James Carr into the action, making the Ardagh man the 34th player to get game time during the league for Mayo this season.