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In the immediate aftermath of Mayo’s win over London last Sunday, as the celebrations died down, the only thing that Alan Dillon was getting ready for was whoever comes out of the hat tomorrow night in the All Ireland quarter-final draw. “Our focus is the All Ireland series, we’ll be keeping the heads down for the next few weeks and focusing.” The Ballintubber clubman was honest in his appraisal of how his side performed on the day saying: “We made it difficult at times for ourselves, our use of the ball at some stages in the game wasn’t as clinical as it should have been. We’ve a lot to work on, it’s a short period now until the next game and it was good to see some of the lads get game time on the pitch, we’ll really put a huge effort in over the next two weeks and all roads lead to Croke Park. We let it drop for periods today, which is disappointing and when we got our chances we took the goals.”

Denis Walsh (Sunday Times)

Fresh off the back of their trouncing of Roscommon last Sunday, the best that Mayo have will be back in the colours of their clubs as round two of the Mayo senior and intermediate championships take centre stage this weekend.

Lambs to the slaughter; the class of a top four in division one team against division three mid-table mediocrity, use whatever other phrase you like but the gulf in class between Mayo and Roscommon was of epic proportions. I was being very kind to Roscommon last week while predicting a five to six point win for Mayo, and was fearful of insulting any Roscommon reader in my first column, truth is I expected it to be a lot more, and when asked before we went live on Mid West Radio on Sunday if I thought Mayo would win, I told Shane Curran (former Rossie keeper and current St Brigid’s net minder) and all listening that Mayo would hammer them.

The action across the divisions in the Mayo League will take a back seat this weekend with the semi-finals of the divisional cups down for decision. The FCS Cup last four sees the meeting of Ballina Town and Castlebar Celtic on one side of the draw, with Westport United and Ballyheane going toe to toe in the other semi-final, both games are down for Saturday evening with 7pm kick-off times.

Having flagged the possibility of an upset here last week little did I think that St Loman’s would overturn Garrycastle in such convincing fashion. Their 10 point win over the men from the south of the county is undoubtedly the talking point after round 2 of the senior club championship. Write Garrycastle off at your peril though. When their injuries clear up I feel they will still have a big say in the outcome of this year’s championship. It does however show how vulnerable they are when a few of their more seasoned campaigners are absent which has to be a major worry from their point of view.

Welcome to my first column as a writer. For the rest of the summer at least, I intend to discuss, analyse and give my opinion on all matters GAA at club and inter-county level. Feel free to e-mail me any comments or opinions you may have. For the week that’s in it my mind in focused on one thing only and there’s no prizes for guessing what that is. Mayo welcome Roscommon to Castlebar on Sunday for the Connacht semi-final and a right to play either London or Leitrim in the Connacht final. It sounds a bit surreal, but yes, London could be in a Connacht final. With the current upheaval in Leitrim and four players designated to the scrapheap for disciplinary reasons I may just fancy a flutter on London to make the final. Leitrim have a small enough panel to pick from without losing players, most notably Wayne McKeon, arguably one of their best players, but that’s for another day.

In the build up to Mayo's Connacht semi-final showdown against Roscommon next Sunday, Mayo manager James Horan has said that he doesn't mind Mayo being grouped in as potential All Ireland winners as that's where his team want to be. When asked did it bother him at last weeks pre-game press conference the Mayo manager said “Not at all, we're an ambitious team, we're looking to be as good as we possibly can and we feel that we have a lot of ability and that's OK, we'll take that. We're making progress and we're going the right way. So we're just going to June 16 and see can we take the next step.”

Six points behind table-toppers Longford Town, Mervue United are completely aware that tomorrow's Fahy's Field encounter against the midlanders is classed in the crucial category.

New Connacht Rugby coach Pat Lam has added a strong Kiwi flavour in completing his squad for next season.