EDITORIAL: Championship action finally gets underway this weekend

It is now a full 52 days since Mayo exited the senior football championship, and GAA fans in the county have had to endure a long wait for the action to get underway in this year’s club championship.
One of the pitfalls of the split championship format is that for a lot of counties there is a no real action of note in the height of the summer season. The junior championship got underway at last here in Mayo last weekend, and now this weekend we finally get to see our county footballers back in action when the senior and intermediate championships get underway.
It really is a famine or a feast as after seven weeks of very little activity, we now have a total of 22 games taking place next weekend in all parts of the county.
The senior championship again this season looks very open. Mayo club football is highly competitive at the moment, with five different clubs having won the Paddy Moclair cup over the last seven seasons.

Favourites
The two most recent winners, Ballina and Westport, will again fancy their chances, and most of the bookmakers make the latter the favourites to reclaim the title they won in 2022.
Westport signalled their intentions with a terrific league campaign where they gave Castlebar Mitchels a hammering in the recent final. Managers Martin Connolly and Shane Conway have a huge squad of players to pick from, and if they manage to hit top gear, they do look the most likely winners of the senior championship. They will meet Ballina in the group stages and that will definitely be one of the most interesting encounters as eight teams look to advance to the knockout stages.
Apart from the big two, Knockmore, Breaffy, Castlebar Mitchels and Ballintubber are perhaps the other sides who can harbour ambitions of overall glory and it would be a huge surprise if the senior winners don’t come from the six teams already mentioned, although the other ten teams involved with be hoping to cause a surprise or two in the coming weeks.

Hugely entertaining
The Intermediate Championship was hugely entertaining last year, with Kilmeena eventually coming out on top. The teams they beat in the semi-final and final, Moy Davitts and Ballinrobe, are the two teams at the top of the market for the Intermediate championship, but the likes of Crossmolina, Parke Keelogues Crimlin, The Neale, Davitts and Hollymount/Carramore will all quietly fancy their chances of making it up to the senior grade.
As previously mentioned, the Junior championship got underway last weekend, and there are 14 teams in the bottom grade this season, making it a total of 46 teams from across the county who will be proudly togging out for their club over the next couple of weeks.
There promises to be some great action to look forward to and hopefully we get some decent weather at the end of what has been a very damp summer so far. Our Sports team has previewed the action with an eight-page supplement this week, and we look forward to bringing you all the action as it happens over the next two months or so.