Can we all agree that the All-Ireland quarter-finals weekend are where the championship really starts?

Teams arrive at the big house on Jones Road with hope in their hearts and there is no mistaking the sense of opportunity in the air around the Applegreen in Enfield, the Croke Park Hotel and Gill’s corner.

The vibe of: ‘If you’re not in, you can’t win!’ is impossible to miss.

In theory, everyone arrives with the same chance of making the final four and that means a shot at the All-Ireland title is so near and yet so far.

There was a time when Mayo were anchor tenants on quarter-finals weekend — they never missed it between 2011 and 2017 and, with the exception of the ‘Newbridge or Nowhere’ saga of 2018, they were in the mix at Croke Park again from 2019 to 2023.

But since then, they’ve been on the outside looking in.

It really is hard to believe that three years have passed since Mayo turned up at this stage of the game. Three years since Dublin ran riot in that second half, outscoring Kevin McStay’s shell-shocked team by 1-11 to 0-3 and cruising to a 12-points win in the process.

Things were never really the same since, and it’s taken three years of blood, sweat and tears for Mayo to get back to the business end of the championship.

Some things have changed, including the man in charge of the Mayo team, the playing rules, and the way that Mayo now go about their business at both ends of the field.

But a significant number of the playing squad remains the same.

In fact, approximately 14 of the 21 players who saw action that day against Dublin will probably feature this coming weekend.

Others like Colm Reape and Eoghan McLaughlin could well be involved again next season while Cillian O’Connor and James Carr would probably be togged this weekend were it not for the respective injury woes that have ruined their seasons.

The remainder — Padraig O’Hora, Jason Doherty and Kevin McLoughlin — have all called time on their Mayo careers and gone on to pastures new.

Into the breach this season have come the likes of Jack Livingstone, Eoin McGreal, Darragh Beirne and Kobe McDonald, three of whom made their championship debuts after the Roscommon debacle when Andy Moran’s rebuilding project really began in earnest.

Kobe (who had just finished his Junior Cert when Mayo last played in the quarters) was the one of the quartet who was fast-tracked quickest into the championship team, and with very good reason as his 1-17 tally in four games will testify.

How to replace him next season is a conversation for another day.

The longer this season goes on, the more it becomes apparent that Mayo’s way of playing is evolving in tandem with the introduction of some new faces in key positions.

Andy Moran is also learning as he goes, figuring out how to get the best out of his panel within the parameters of a game that has changed so much from when he played it.

They are just some of the reasons why trying to get a read on Mayo is so difficult this year.
That won’t be lost on the Cork brain trust this week either.

John Cleary and Kevin Walsh and company will come with a game-plan that will be built on creating two-point opportunities for Steven Sherlock and friends, and designed to take away those same opportunities for Mayo’s long-range shooters.

But both teams seem to prefer chaos to structure so anything could happen when the ball is thrown in by Martin McNally.

By pure coincidence, it’s taken Cork the exact same length of time as Mayo to make the last eight again.

Their 2023 quarter-final game against Derry that sunny July Sunday was billed as the undercard to the clash of the titans and that’s exactly how it played out.

Watching it was a way for the big Mayo and Dublin crowds to pass the time as Derry ran out four-point winners and Cork went back down the road without a whole load of notice being taken.

From memory, the fall-out in Mayo was a lot louder and went on a lot longer.

When was it ever any other way?

(For the record, around ten of the Cork players who featured that day will probably be in action against this time around).

Saturday is a chance to see where these current iterations of Mayo and Cork are at. It is also a golden opportunity for one of them to smash the glass ceiling for the first time in too long. (Cork haven’t played in an All-Ireland semi-final since 2010).

The championship starts here.

Mayo will be hoping it doesn’t end just yet, but trying to predict what will happen is a fool’s errand. Time to sit back, enjoy the show, and remind ourselves of what we’ve been missing.