Mayo and Roscommon is the main focus for all Mayo supporters this weekend, but I have to start by mentioning the loss of our captain Paddy Durcan.

Paddy is an honest a team-mate as any player could wish to have. He has been a real driving force for Mayo for nearly a decade and an inspirational figure throughout.

He is not a bad footballer either!

I for one am looking forward to see him in the Green and Red jersey in 2025.

Ironically, Paddy kicked the opening score when Mayo played Roscommon in the first round of the championship five weeks ago.

Playing a team in the championship that you have beaten previously is not an easy task but that’s the challenge that Mayo face now. We saw Donegal respond to this challenge perfectly last weekend by putting Tyrone to the sword again.

In fairness, we managed a similar feat ourselves last year by beating Galway in the league final and then knocking them out of the championship two months later.

But one thing for sure is that the Rossies and Davy Burke will be banging the drum this week that there is no way Mayo are coming into their patch again and leaving with a win. I expect them to come spitting fire, to be honest.

If they don’t, there is something fundamentally wrong in that camp.

So how do Mayo approach this? First of all, I believe we are a better team than Roscommon, but that counts for very little once the ball is thrown in if we don’t at least match their intensity.

When we didn’t do this in MacHale Park last year, we were ambushed. So straight away, from the off, meet fire with fire, no backward steps, don’t wait for the war to come to you, start the war yourselves.

The second area I would be looking at is their shooters — Cox, Murtagh and Daire Cregg. Don’t give them time to breath.

What we know about Cox and Murtagh, in particular, is that they are trigger-happy and confidence players. They can have hot streaks for twenty minutes in a game where they are shooting the lights out. But you have to keep the pressure on them as they have a tendency to go missing when the real pressure comes.

Murtagh was electric in the first half in both the league and championship meetings between these teams but poor in both second halves.

I would expect to see David McBrien on Cox and Jack Coyne on Diarmuid Murtagh.

The lack of physicality around the middle-third is still a concern for me and this is a huge area we can improve on. Diarmuid O Connor’s absence is a huge blow. Roscommon got the better in this sector for long periods in the Connacht championship meeting.

Donnacha McHugh is likely to line up in this area again to pick up Enda Smith, although I have a feeling that Burke will move Smith out of there as he has been a sitting duck lately and change of position is likely.

It would be interesting to see how Mayo shuffle the pack if that did happen.

I spoke on the pod before the previous meeting between these two that I felt we had the beating of them up front. It turned out to be the best our full-forward line has played all year, scoring 1-7 from play.

I think Ryan O Donoghue has David Murray’s number and I will be more than happy to see that match-up again, as would Ryan, I’m sure.

Brian Stack hasn’t looked right to me since returning after his club campaign with St Brigid’s and has struggled on Aidan O Shea on their last two meetings. Although Cillian O Connor is likely to start this time around, I’d be confident again that Cillian will get the better of that duel too. Tommy Conroy had a quiet game against Cavan but four points in the previous two games tells me there is more to come.

The reality is although this is not knock-out football, this is a game Mayo simply have to win. We can’t be expecting to mix it with big boys in a few weeks’ time if we can’t beat a team that’s won one in nine league and championship games this year.

It will be far from straightforward but I am expecting us to get the job done.