All roads to ending 70 years of hurt lead to Croke Park tomorrow evening.
The Mayo senior footballers go in search for the 11th time since 1951 of ending a storyline that has gripped the county like hardly any other.
No supporters were allowed make the pilgrimage to GAA headquarters for last year's final meeting with Dublin due to Covid-19 restrictions, but tomorrow evening, (Saturday, September 11 ), the Mayo faithful will be back in situ to roar on their team as part of the reduced 40,000-odd crowd permitted at the 80,000-capacity Jones Road venue.
It will be the 11th (13th including replays ) time Mayo have reached the showpiece occasion of Gaelic football since 1989 and Mayo supporters from every corner of the country and from different parts of the world will be on hand in 'Croker' to cheer them on once more - if they were lucky enough to get their hands on one of the golden tickets.
Ticket-demand is something that can never be met satisfactorily in any All Ireland final, but this year's final is especially tough for loyal Mayo fans seeking to witness the action first hand, due to the dramatically reduced capacity on offer to supporters.
It has been a tough job for the county board and club officers across the county to distribute their limited supply of tickets as best they can to their members, and also for those who were season ticket holders in previous years - with those season ticket holders having to hope that they would be among the 1,000 lucky ones drawn out of the hat in two different draws allotted for this purpose.
The county has been festooned with green and red for the past few weeks as everyone rowed in behind the Mayo team. It's been a tough year and a half for everyone in the country and worldwide due to Covid-19 and as Ireland starts to finally emerge back into some kind of normality in the coming weeks, a Mayo victory on Saturday evening would provide just the perfect pep in the step for the faithful to enjoy.
On the field, concentration has been focused on whether Mayo will be able to field their strongest team - with young players in particular being a focus of attention: Oisin Mullin - who missed the semi-final win over Dublin - and Eoghan McLaughlin - who got injured in that game, hopefully now sufficiently recovered for the match.
James Horan and his squad have been busy putting in the hard yards quietly over the past number of weeks since that memorable win over Dublin and they will put their best foot forward tomorrow evening, representing all that is good about Mayo and its people. Good luck Mayo!
