There was no yelping in the Mayo dressing-room. All was calm. Not much emotion at all, in fact. Mayo all but promised a win yesterday and did not appear surprised when that came to pass.

John Maughan, mobbed by the masses as on so many days past, was last to leave the sunny field in Castlebar. He agreed that there was nothing coy about Mayo's attitude yesterday.

"Yeah, I have brought that kind of confidence into games before and didn't back it up. But I felt it was coming, to be perfectly honest, I went on record before the game on RTÉ and I suggested that, yeah, we would definitely win the game.

"I had that feeling for the last 48 hours. George Golden had it for the last 48 weeks. Liam McHale has had it for quite a while as well."

That mood had been well flagged, but although Mayo were bright and promising in the league it was hard to see where the foundations for such conviction lay.

"I didn't really believe until I saw it come together in the last few weeks," said Maughan in consideration.

"Obviously Kieran McDonald coming back, David Brady coming back, James Gill travelling the world or whatever he was doing, Conor Mortimer studying in England - all those guys came back in and we had a cohesive unit and a strong bench. It just came together for us over the past month.

"But I want to put it in context. Beating Galway has been the benchmark for the past few years, but this is just a semi-final and it is my job now to keep the feet on the ground."

Conor Mortimer, the game's top scorer, slouched against a wall and considered what was an impressive 70 minutes of championship football.

"It is my first time beating Galway," he began. "With 15 minutes to go we were seven points up. But we didn't get iffy and butty, we drove it home. And we are all delighted now with the win.

"In the camp we always had belief, and I personally did. We always thought we would beat Galway, that we were as good if not better.

"At half-time, John just said keep it going, keep playing ball in and things will happen. Then David Brady came in and was super. David Heaney played brilliantly. In the last 10 minutes you get that feeling you are going to win.

"But, like, we are not stupid. At the end of the day, we have won nothing. Galway didn't win the All-Ireland last year, they are just another team like us. We have done nothing extraordinary."

For the second summer running John O'Mahony contemplated an arid weekend in Castlebar. Last year, in the All-Ireland quarter-final replay against Donegal, it was claimed that Galway were close to the end. Here, the same conclusion was drawn.

The Galway manager sat on a bench in the dressing-room and shrugged. "We just were not able to up the ante. We have no complaints and would just like to wish Mayo well in the Connacht final.

"We have been on this road before and are on it again now. It wasn't planned. We felt there were periods in the second half, we felt if we got that bit closer we would have pushed on. But we never got to that platform. That is it. We had good days as well, but this belongs to Mayo."

After a month on the challenge circuit, Galway's season now reaches critical mass in the space of six days. Injury-ravaged and badly beaten in the local derby, they have a lot to do.

"Yeah, but we won't complain about that," O'Mahony promised. "If we were to go out of the championship, it is even harder to go out after losing a provincial final, so we will look to positives. We just didn't match them all over the field. I wouldn't blame any individuals because these fellas have given us too many good days to go into post mortems like that. We just have to ask them one more time to pick up the pieces."