Underdogs could bark loudly in Castlebar

In sport, lots of characteristics are required in order to excel. You need to be talented, determined, committed and have a belief that you can do well. And in order to achieve, at various stages you may also need a healthy dollop of delusion to keep going when everyone else tells you it’d be smarter, and save you a lot of hassle, to stop altogether.

As supporters, we also need some delusion to believe that our team can do well, even when all the odds are stacked against that actually happening.

Sligo will arrive in Castlebar next Sunday as rank outsiders to beat Mayo, yet there’s a chance it might happen. There always is.

To believe that, you need to forget about the fact that 19 places separated the sides in the final standings in the Allianz Football League, forget about the fact that Sligo haven’t beaten Mayo in 15 years and forget about the fact that a Sligo team hasn’t won a senior championship match against Mayo in Castlebar in 50 years.

Anyone for some delusion?

When the championship draw was made last autumn, the Mayo tie was one that many Sligo folk would have circled with bright red marker as the key date in this year’s calendar, not only because the Connacht Championship still retains a sense of importance, but also because there’s a genuine belief that Sligo can upset the odds.

That belief, I would argue, has turned back to hope given how 2025 has worked out for both counties thus far.

Sligo’s Division 3 campaign was a curious one. They mixed the extremely poor – a seven-point loss to Laois – with the extremely good, best encapsulated by the two-point victory over Clare. Ultimately, a terribly slow start put an end to any promotion ambitions early on, but at least Sligo finished the league strongly.

Mayo, to their credit, have also bounced back from a below-par start to 2025. They were unfortunate not to get something from the game against Dublin at Croke Park, and the Galway reversal was worse on paper than it was in reality. Since then, they’ve been excellent, though last Sunday’s league final against Kerry was closer to average than good.

Taking the temperature at a national level, Mayo don’t seem to be among many people’s contenders for an All-Ireland crown. That is a fair assessment, and you can probably make the case for four or five other counties to be ahead of them in the pecking order. But the All-Ireland series is now a close-run thing and, if Mayo strike form at the right time, they can be there or thereabouts.

So all the logic points to a Mayo victory on Sunday. Here’s my argument for why Sligo might upset things.

Tony McEntee’s time in charge has been a period of progress, albeit slower in some instances than many supporters might like. Success is rarely linear, so Sligo have done well to come from a situation of having not won a game in the 2019 season to now being a competitive outfit in Division 3, having reached two Tailteann Cup semi-finals, a Connacht final in 2023 and competing in the All-Ireland series in 2023 as well.

Small money in many people’s eyes, yet the trend has been upwards. But, there’s a sense now that there’s a need to rubber-stamp that progress with something tangible to cling onto: either a statement championship win or a Tailteann Cup crown.

That statement championship win should have been last year’s meeting with Galway at Markievicz Park, but the concession of an injury-time goal saw that slip from their grasp. Yet, I think Sligo’s upward trend is poised to continue this season and the finish to the league campaign suggests they are moving in the right direction.

All of that said, outings against Mayo in the recent past have not been a pleasant experience.

In 2021, the visitors clocked up 3-23 in a 20-point hammering in Sligo; the 2015 Connacht final finished in a 6-25 to 2-11 victory for Mayo in Roscommon and in 2017, even after a pretty good Sligo display, Mayo still won by nine in Castlebar.

But, since all of those games, one key area is beginning to level out with the counties. In all of the aforementioned matches, Mayo physically dominated Sligo. I don’t think the gulf between the two counties in that sense is as big now as it once was; Sligo’s young team from 2021 has matured nicely while Mayo have lost some big, physical players to retirement in the interim.

Mayo, though, still have a significant edge in that department and that could be telling on Sunday when the vast majority of kickouts will go long. Sligo have struggled with that this season, particularly in their opening round defeat to Offaly.

Sean Carrabine has been a colossal loss for Sligo, but Niall Murphy remains one of the best forwards in the province and the new rules suit the running power Sligo have from deep, with Luke Towey and Darragh Cummins both superb at various stages this spring. Pat Spillane is also growing into things, while Canice Mulligan is adjusting to life well at senior level.

Match-ups will be important, with Sligo needing to tie up both Ryan O’Donoghue and Aidan O’Shea as best they can to nullify Mayo’s attacking threat. Mattie Ruane and Jordan Flynn will also take watching, with both players capable of contributing on the scoreboard as well as causing trouble with piercing runs from the middle third.

The Connacht Championship is important for Mayo, especially how last year’s title slipped from their grasp at the death in Salthill, so it’s unlikely they’ll be caught with their eye off the ball on Sunday. Sligo, though, will travel determined to show they’re capable of mixing it with the bigger teams.

They might not win, they might not even get close, and I might be a tad deluded, but right now, Sligo are in with a shout.