Good question, responds TJ Reid when he is asked whether Sunday feels like an All-Ireland final.

Mayo defender Eoin O’Donoghue is confident county colleague and close pal Matthew Ruane isn’t interested in a switch to Aussie Rules.

THREE late points propelled Ballintubber to their fifth Mayo SFC title after an absorbing final at a rain-soaked McHale Park, Castlebar this evening.

Darkhorses Ballaghderreen upset the odds yesterday to book their place in a first Mayo SFC final since 2012 when they beat Castlebar Mitchels at MacHale Park.

Last year’s beaten finalists Breaffy crashed out of the Mayo SFC over the weekend as the four semi-finalists in this season’s competition were decided.

The legend goes that, upon his release from 27 years imprisonment, the first words Nelson Mandela uttered as he shielded his eyes from the hot South African sun were “Is Martin Carney still playing for Mayo?”

Catch up on the headlines.

Mayo footballer Andy Moran has announced that he has retired from inter-county football.

It used be thought you couldn’t win anything with young players, until Alex Ferguson came along and turned that on its head with his team of tyros from the class of ’92.

It takes a special team to make a team like Mayo look so old, spent, lost.

So Mayo poked the bear, and the bear reacted by consuming them whole. In eight blistering minutes after the interval, Dublin turned a two-point deficit into and an eight-point lead.

The most combustible GAA rivalry of this decade gets one more run out this evening at Croke Park and it promises once again to be explosive.

Just once have Dublin failed to score a goal against Mayo and their nine points were still enough to win in a dour

Michael Murphy, captain of the last team to beat Dublin in the Championship 35 games ago, has suggested what it’ll take for Mayo to repeat that feat this weekend — a 2-20 scoreline.

Getting the match-ups right has gone a long way for Kerry and Mayo in recent years. We think of Aidan O’Mahony on Michael Murphy in the 2014 final, Lee Keegan on Enda Smith in the 2017 All-Ireland quarter-final replay and just last weekend Patrick Durcan tagging Ryan McHugh.

Two key members of past Mayo football management teams have painted a revealing portrait of a ‘phenomenal’ group of men whose crucial attributes are their ordinariness and thirst for information.

Imagine trying to convince somebody that, after 68 years of trial and epic failure, the prize they crave so badly will never be theirs, always beyond them.

I can’t tell you how much of a buzz it would have been for David Gough to have taken charge of Saturday’s game in Castlebar.

In first-half injury time, with Mayo having pushed their advantage over a spluttering Donegal from two points down to six up, Fionn McDonagh hit Donegal’s Jamie Brennan with a ferocious, fair shoulder to win possession right in front of a heaving Gerry McDonald stand.

Andy Moran kicked two injury-time points to ensure his Mayo side sealed a place in the All-Ireland semi-finals as they withheld any notions of Donegal comeback.

You could cut the tension with a knife. Everyone was on edge wondering how would the fun-loving, stone-mad GAA fan handle the windswept conditions in Portrush.

Little House on the Prairie is not an obvious starting point for a Super 8s allegory, but of all the virtues required by those who read and write about Mayo football, tolerance of the absurd is paramount, so I urge you to endure.

When David Clifford reduced the deficit to one point in the 72nd minute of the league final, the game hinged on the next Mayo kickout.

By the time the final whistle blew in Portlaoise last Sunday afternoon, the landscape of this season’s Super 8s was finally set.

Collateral damage or a typically tigerish season? This evening’s all-or-nothing duel with a county they have not beaten in five league and championship games will go a long way to defining Mayo’s 2019.

Former Galway footballer Seán Óg de Paor does not expect Kevin Walsh to abandon his favoured defensive approach in tomorrow’s season-defining clash with neighbours Mayo.

So far the evidence would suggest Mayo are going down a similar route to 2017 for their qualifier odyssey.

There was no shortage of drama or excitement in Castlebar as the All-Ireland SFC Qualifiers served up a thriller with Mayo doing just enough to book their place in the next round.

In the typical nature of Mayo championship games, there was enough in their five-point win over Down on Saturday night for Mayo manager James Horan to get his teeth into when the post-match analysis starts in earnest.

Mayo got their hunt for a Super 8's place back on track after that messy Roscommon defeat in Connacht, with a typically nerve-shredding win over Down on Saturday night.

Tomorrow, at Pearse Stadium, Galway midfielder Tom Flynn will hope to pocket a third Connacht SFC medal in four years, having started the previous two final victories.

Until last weekend, Andy Moran had made it through his entire Mayo football career without losing to Roscommon in the Championship.

A Fintan Cregg point in the third minute of second-half stoppages scored Roscommon a famous Connacht semi-final win over Mayo, the county’s first championship triumph at the venue since 1986.

Not one for watching recorded sport, especially if the result is known in advance, but an exception was made for this year’s Division One football league final between Mayo and Kerry.

Mayo got their 2019 championship campaign off to an impressive start with a facile win at Gaelic Park against a New York side who were outclassed.

Mayo captain Diarmuid O'Connor has missed out on the Mayo team for their Championship opener in New York.

Lee Keegan has revealed that James Horan is a little more hands-on, a little more knowledgeable, and a little more “scary2 in his second stint as Mayo manager.

Former Mayo captain Cillian O’Connor made his first appearance in almost five months when he lined out for Ballintubber in the first round of the Mayo SFC on Saturday evening.

Ahead of last Sunday’s league final on the always-entertaining GAA Hour podcast, Steven McDonnell and Colm Parkinson came from contrasting schools of thought when it came to predicting a winner.

At the ninth time of asking, Andy Moran was a winner in a national senior final on Sunday — and boy did it feel sweet.

Last Sunday saw the curtain come down on what was one of the more enjoyable and competitive national football league campaigns in recent memory.

If Mayo supporters didn’t see their lives of final anguish flashing before their eyes as Stephen O’Brien squared the ball for David Clifford in the first minute of additional time then they are lying.

Mayo 3-11 Kerry 2-10

17 days ago, Donie Buckley turned the car and headed north from Ennis. Like he had done for the five previous years.