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Football focus turns to the first round of the Galway Senior Football Championship which throws in this weekend.

It was a heroic effort, but in the end Padraic Joyce’s Galway team succumbed to a late Kerry surge in the 2022 All-Ireland Football Championship final.

Right on cue, the drizzle started to fall as the final few moments of the Galway adventure came to a heartbreaking conclusion in Croke Park.

Championship football is about finding a way. It is a motto that has served Galway footballers well throughout the past three months.

Last Sunday's way below par performance and subsequent defeat by our biggest Connacht rivals - Galway - made it a very bitter pill to swallow for the Mayo faithful who travelled to Hastings Insurance MacHale Park in huge numbers.

Padraic Joyce managed Galway to a championship victory over Mayo for the first time on Sunday with a superb 1-14 to 0-16 victory in over their arch rivals in Castlebar.

They could have forced it to extra time at the death, when Aiden Orme took aim from the stand side of the field and kicked for a point but his effort tailed just wide of the target and from Connor Gleeson’s kick-out David Coldrick blew the final whistle.

There's nothing quite like a Mayo versus Galway championship encounter to whet the appetite for championship football. Rivalries have come and gone in other provinces, the likes of Meath and Dublin in Leinster and Cork and Kerry in Munster are no longer as appealing as they once were because of the dominance and stranglehold that Dublin and Kerry possess within their provinces.

The real stuff starts now. The league is a thing of the past, put away neatly in a box until early next year. it's championship time and while the Easter Eggs may still be lingering around the house ready to be finished off, Sunday is the start of a new main course and there are few tastier ones than Mayo and Galway in the championship.

Our biggest fears were realised, but not in our wildest imaginations did we envisage a 15-point mauling at the hands of Kerry in last Sunday's league final.