Stage is set for Battle of the Republics

There are weeks when a county stops behaving like a county.

This is one of them.

The fields are still there, waiting on a dry spell and the arrival of the baler. The Atlantic is still throwing itself against the rocks of the western seaboard with that same old ferocity. The tourists are still buying ice creams in Westport and asking for directions to Keem. But something almost intangible has shifted all the same. You can feel it in the slower conversations at shop counters, in the hour that slips away leaning across a gate along a country road, in the extra five minutes stolen at the end of a cup of tea.

Mayo has become something else. It's not quite a county at the moment. Rather, it’s something closer to a small republic.

And its citizens have only one item on the order paper. The Department of Agriculture is hoping the second cut is safely gathered before Saturday evening. The Department of Transport is quietly preparing for the well-trodden migration east. The Department of Finance has accepted that another small fortune will disappear on diesel and jerseys and somewhere to leave the car within walking distance of Croke Park. Meanwhile, the Department of Health has issued the same old annual reminder that shouting at televisions offers few proven medical benefits. Compliance, no doubt, will be as low as ever.

It all happens because opportunity has a way of altering the ordinary. A fortnight ago, this looked like another championship destined to be settled by the game's familiar nobility, the old houses with their polished silver and inherited confidence. Then, the summer took a sharp turn into the unknown. Doors that had seemed bolted suddenly swung open. And now two counties who were considered merely distant observers only a few weeks ago find themselves standing 70 minutes from the biggest stage of all.

Louth has, of course, also declared its own republic this week, and is speaking the same language as those in Mayo. They're flirting with the same hopeful conversations, the same cautious glances at hotel prices later in the month, trying not to look too far ahead while imagining exactly what lies beyond Saturday.

That is the peculiar democracy of championship football. Every so often it remembers its purpose. Every so often it reaches beyond the old dynasties and allows others to believe, however briefly, that history might yet be persuaded to change its course.

Still, it's difficult to escape the county's history. Nobody escapes that. In Mayo, children learn about 1989 and 1996 and 2017 long before they understand long multiplication or an Modh Coinníollach. They hear the names. They know the moments. They inherit the sighs. But there is a difference between knowing the history and carrying it. And the current batch of young footballers that have only recently swanned into the Mayo panel has not yet accepted the burden. They have the luxury of not yet knowing what everyone else is worrying about.

If Ardnaree gave Mayo Jinkin' Joe, Claremorris answered with their own adaptation. Buccaneering Beirne, if you will forgive the forced alliteration, is a flame-haired blur of perpetual motion, forever finding the pocket of space hidden in plain sight. Further back the pitch, the county has uncovered Breaffy's own modern version of Horatius in Jack Livingstone. And then there is the Fresh Prince of Crossmolina. What more can be said about him?

It truly is an embarrassment of riches upon which Mayo manager Andy Moran has got his hands.

They bring the beautiful arrogance of youth. Not the arrogance of boastfulness or bravado, but the quiet certainty that impossible things are merely difficult things that haven't happened yet. Experience teaches footballers many valuable lessons. It also teaches caution. It teaches consequence. Sometimes, if they're not careful, it teaches fear.

Young footballers don't arrive carrying that same sense of caution with them. They see grass instead of danger, opportunity instead of consequence, possibility instead of history.

For now, at least.

Every successful team needs a little of that beautiful ignorance. Experience wins you the occasional battle. But youth still wins most revolutions. Whether or not they're eventually successful, they have at the very least changed the conversation in Mayo. That, in itself, is a feat not to be scoffed at.

But Louth, too, has spent long enough wandering the championship wilderness to recognise the value of a map when one finally appears. This week, the conversations sound familiar. Tickets are changing hands. Kitchen tables have become selection committees. The old routines have quietly returned to a county that feared they might never come back.

Louth manager Gavin Devlin has not so much rebuilt the county as revealed it. He inherited more than a team. He inherited years of unseen work, of young footballers learning their trade during wet winters and older footballers refusing to let the dream die altogether. He has walked much of that journey already, first in the background with Mickey Harte and now at the front of the procession. Sometimes leadership is not about changing direction. Sometimes it is simply knowing the road well enough to keep everyone walking. And the supporters have now emerged with their team.

There are old men and women in Louth who have waited years for a championship day like this. They've spent decades watching the Holy Ground off Clonliffe Road with other colours, generations spent wondering what it might feel like when it was their turn – if that day ever came. Those thoughts are no longer theoretical. That is what makes Saturday evening so intriguing.

Mayo have rediscovered themselves. Louth are discovering themselves.

By this time next week, one of these republics will have quietly surrendered its independence.

The flags will come down. The jerseys will return to wardrobes. Conversations that have drifted effortlessly from football to travel itineraries will once again concern themselves with weather and holidays and the price of diesel. Ordinary life will reclaim its place.

The other county will be granted another fortnight to dream.

There is no justice in championship football; there is only opportunity. One county will leave Croke Park carrying another scar. The other will leave in ecstasy and, for another fortnight at least, the Republic will endure.