John Fogarty asks what previous All-Ireland final replays can tell us about Saturday’s game?

To curve or to swerve — that is the question.

“I learned a long time ago when Kerry talk about other counties, I take it with a pinch of salt.”

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.

Tony Leen A

You imagine as the Kerry party left Croke Park yesterday evening they were preparing a case for the defence of Stephen O’Brien.

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.

If you weren’t glorifying, you were gulping.

Mayo manager James Horan had already conceded the fact that his side handled Dublin’s third quarter power surge very poorly when the subject of fatigue was mentioned.

That after the event, James Horan didn’t appear exasperated by the persistent line of questioning regarding the catastrophic opening 12 minutes of the second half for Mayo suggests he too believes their All-Ireland semi-final hopes foundered in that period.

A blitz of 2-6 in 11 early second half minutes inspired by Con O’Callaghan and Paul Mannion sent Dublin into a fifth straight All-Ireland final.

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

The Dubliner who managed Mayo players Lee Keegan and Fionn McDonagh to All-Ireland club glory believes Mayo can halt the drive for five on Saturday.

It’s to him that most eyes will turn tomorrow evening. Wherever Lee Keegan is, there will be toil and there will be trouble.

Mayo are hardly Dublin’s bogey team but in the eyes of many of the capital’s supporters they are bogeymen. They are the team they warn their children about. Condemned to death only to rise and haunt opponents again and again.

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.

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.

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.

The group-deciding Super 8 encounter this evening in Castlebar has the potential to be explosive, a real old-style knockout championship game. There is no love lost between Mayo and Donegal dating back to the now infamous challenge game in 2012 and there are a lot of ifs, buts, and maybes making it a hard game to call.

Former Donegal footballer Brendan Devenney expects Declan Bonner’s men to dump Mayo out of the championship this Saturday but believes Donegal, along with Kerry and Tyrone, are playing for second place thereafter, as Dublin will not be toppled.

Patience will be a virtue for Mayo against Donegal in their Super 8 encounter at MacHale Park on Saturday evening, according to Alan Dillon.

Are you a Gaelic football fan who is interested in American politics, but doesn’t want to listen to a 90-minute New Yorker podcast in order to sound hip at the watercooler? Here’s a breakdown of the contenders as Super 8 teams (and Galway)...

It’s not often golf takes precedence over Gaelic games for me but this was an exception — and oh what an exception.

When I was in charge of Kerry one of the our mantras at different stages was: “Earn the right to play, then play.”

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.

Kerry don’t lose many championship games in Killarney, but Mayo could cause Peter Keane’s charges a mountain of problems.

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

Mayo manager James Horan said he and his team can’t wait to face Kerry in Fitzgerald Stadium in their opening Super 8 game.

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.

Cork have shaken things up for their first ever senior hurling championship fixture against Westmeath, with five changes from the side that lost to Clare in their final round-robin game in Munster.

Capacity concerns and Galway and Mayo’s refusal to toss a coin for home advantage meant their All-Ireland SFC Round 4 game was fixed for the LIT Gaelic Grounds this Saturday evening (7pm).

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.

Éamonn Fitzmaurice, the former Kerry manager, has addressed his relationship and rivalry with Mayo in the print edition of Saturday’s Examiner Sport - and it makes for intriguing reading.

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.

Mayo manager James Horan has made three changes for their Connacht Senior Football Championship semi-final against Roscommon on Saturday.

On the de facto opening Championship weekend, Greg Kennedy provided a whopper.

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 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.

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.