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With the first championship hurdle out of the way in London, Mayo are back on home soil this weekend and the visit of the old rivals from south of the border is the main attraction. For Mayo manager Stephen Rochford this is the day he's been waiting for since he took over the side late last year.

Mayo manager Stephen Rochford said this week that he is in no rush to fast-track through a large group of Michael Solan's All Ireland U21 winning side into the senior set up. Brian Reape has been brought in to the senior championship squad recently alongside four others, Diarmuid O'Connor, Stephen Coen, Michael Hall, and Conor Loftus, who have all been with the senior set up previously.

Sunday will be the last time the public get to see Mayo in action on their home patch until June 18 at the earliest, when their Connacht semi-final against Galway is scheduled to take place, providing of course that Mayo get over London in Ruislip at the tail end of May. The last time a new Mayo manager faced into a game against London on their own patch it nearly derailed the James Horan project before it even got going.

Mayo manager Stephen Rochford named his starting 15 for Sunday’s league showdown with Roscommon on Sunday afternoon on Friday night. The team named from one to 15 shows three changes from the side that started against Kerry a fortnight ago with Chris Barrett, Evan Regan and Conor Loftus coming into the side with Donal Vaughan, Kevin McLoughlin and Cathal Carolan making way.

The Mayo senior hurlers cemented their place at the top of the division 2B league table last weekend with their second tough road win on the bounce seeing off Down by 0-20 to 0-16 in Newry last Sunday. That was JP Coen's men third win in a row, but it came at a big cost he told us this week.

Life in general and sport in particular are all about “what ifs”. In the run-up to Mayo's crucial league game against Donegal on Sunday, I can't help but think of another what if. What if Corofin had beaten Castlebar Mitchels last November in the Connacht club final, how would Stephen Rochford have coped with the pressures of managing two high profile teams; with great difficulty, I think is the answer. Despite being robbed of the services of the Castlebar contingent for the first five rounds of the league, because of their run to the All-Ireland club final, the Mitchels have done Mayo football a huge favour in beating Corofin and allowing Rochford to concentrate on matters Mayo. Try to imagine what it would have been like managing both teams; virtually impossible. You would probably cope during the week where you'd have training with both teams on alternative nights but it's the weekends that would constitute the big problem.

The Mayo ladies' senior football team have got their season off to the perfect start with three wins from their opening three games. On paper it looked like the toughest of starts that Frank Browne's side could have had away to the defending All Ireland champions Cork, before Dublin came to Mayo the following week, and then a trip to Tuam to take on a Galway side that have claimed the last four Connacht titles. But Mayo have come out of those three games with three wins out of three and have set themselves up nicely for a crack at the league title.

The Mayo senior hurlers get their league season underway on Sunday, when they host Donegal in Elverys MacHale Park at 2pm. Mayo will be hoping to use the league as a learning curve as they have much bigger things on their mind come summertime.

If Stephen Rochford had any notion that the Mayo manager’s job was going to be a bed of roses and that the press and public would be forgiving for the settling in period then he was met with a rude awakening in Pairc Ui Rinn, Cork, last Sunday. On top of Mayo’s lethargic and very under par performance, three more players were added to the enormous injury/unavailable list, and serious question marks were asked about the Mayo medical team’s decision to leave Lee Keegan on the field after a head collision with Cork power house Eoghan Cadogan.

For the second week in a row the Mayo ladies senior footballers will be facing the same opposition as their male counterparts, but unlike the men last weekend the Mayo ladies left Cork with the points in the bag thanks to a seven point win over the All Ireland champions.