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Over the past few years, Mayo haven’t really faced a must-win game until summer had really kicked in and summer holidays were in full swing. But this Sunday in the middle of the Easter break, Mayo are staring down the barrel of a must-win game of football or Division Two next year is becoming a very real possability.

There will always be quibbles with the referees decisions in games, there were plenty to pick over from Rory Hickey’s display. In particular in the 26th minute when Aidan O’Shea was manhandled to the deck by a couple of Kerry players including Aidan O’Mahony, who were aided by Kieran Donaghy testing the strength of the material in the black and lime Mayo jersey. Aidan managed to scoop the ball over the bar somehow from being right under the crossbar for a point, but Hickey should have blown for a penalty before he ever got the shot off. But it wasn’t refereeing decisions that cost Mayo in MacHale Park, it was just bad decision making, poor execution of skills and just not being at the races in the final 35 minutes, all their own doing.

Last Saturday can only be described as a Super Saturday within Mayo GAA circles with three big games on — However none of the results matched the excitement within the county. The All-Ireland champions Dublin travelled to Elvery’s MacHale Park for what was meant to be a walk in the park for them, given Mayo’s performance the previous week in Cork. What ensued was everything but as a very different Mayo made them fight to the bitter end, only for Dublin to scrape home by two points.

Aidan O’Shea will play his first football in Mayo colours since last years All Ireland semi-final replay defeat to Dublin when Mayo take on Cork in Páirc Ui Rinn on Sunday. The Breaffy man has been picked at centre-half-forward in Rochford’s first National Football League team.

When the history books on Stephen Rochford’s tenure in charge of Mayo are written, this game will be a brief footnote in the overall analysis of his term as Mayo senior manager, but it will be a winning footnote. He started just one third of the side that last were in competitive action for Mayo last September and gave debuts to a handful of hopefuls, while a number of probables and returning faces were also given starts in the first game of the 2016 adventure.

Earlier this week the names of a number of returning and new faces who have been invited into the Mayo panel for the early stages of next year's campaign emerged into the public sphere, with the likes of Jason Gibbons, Cathal Carolan, and Shane McHale being mentioned as coming back into the fold alongside the likes of David Kenny, Shane Nally, and Caolan Crowe amongst others.

While Garrymore would have prepared for all eventualities as best they could going into this game, the prospect of Aidan O’Shea loitering behind his midfielders and closing things up at the back is probably one of the last things they would have expected to face on Saturday afternoon. O’Shea who was deployed as a target man full forward for Mayo all summer and was posted in a similar position in Breaffy’s last league game against Kilmaine a fortnight ago and his positioning would have caught plenty of people off guard who were in the county grounds for this game.

Breaffy v Garrymore