You'd imagine that Sligo folk are gleefully rubbing their hands right now. The news drifting north from the Corrib reeks of turmoil. Ja Fallon gone, Sean Og de Paor the latest casualty. Defenders falling like flies. Kevin Walsh, Galway's towering midfielder, fit only for the bench. Dead men walking. There for the taking. Mickey Moran allows himself a low laugh at the thought of Galway arriving in Markievicz Park all bandages and misery.
"Look, John O'Mahony is as good a spindoctor as they come," he says cheerfully. "I pay no heed to it.
"I will say that I genuinely feel for Ja Fallon, it's a terrible thing to happen to any player, but I have to say that during my time working with Ja on the International Rules squad in Australia, I found him to be an absolutely terrific fella, on and off the field. So I was really saddened for him.
"But look, a team like Galway aren't going to be in turmoil on Sunday. Whoever steps in for Ja, for example, will be a player with an All-Ireland to his name. There aren't any All-Irelands in Sligo. And Michael Donnellan is due to step in. What county would refuse him. All that talk of turmoil is rubbish."
And Moran ought to recognise turmoil when he sees it. Take the aftermath of Sligo's last league game against Clare. A sunny day in Ennis, history beckoning, a league semi-final place within touching distance. It was all embers after a flat performance and a cruel twist which saw Meath take the last play-off spot on goal difference. Sligo remained in their dressing-room for a long and silent time. Afterwards, Moran was typically accurate and unflinching in his summary of the game.
"The hype and build-up for that game was unreal," he says now. "Supporters had that double-edge thing where the whole thing depended on score differences as well as the result. It was deeply disappointing. But we had to just put that day behind us, look upon it as an experience and try and move on. We just didn't perform but they had the character to come back and prove themselves against Mayo.
"To win that was a massive psychological boost to us, not having beaten them in 25 years or whatever. That said, we at times displayed a degree of vulnerability during that match also. When we analysed it in the cold light of day, there were times when we could have been taken."
Moran believes that while it is inevitable that all teams in Sligo's position - their graph showing notable improvement but at a steady rather than dramatic rate - will lapse at certain times in all games. The key is learning from each error.
"I think that the season in Division One really helped us. You take Antrim. Really should have beaten Derry the first day. Ask them after the replay what the difference was and I'd say they felt as if they were hit with a huge physical and mental tide characteristic of a Division One side. The gulf between divisions two and one became apparent. We learned from playing Division One this year. But how much, well, we'll know after Sunday."
Talking of replays, didn't they take Galway, then All-Ireland champions, to a second date last year?
"Yes, and we didn't perform at all in that replay, never asked questions of Galway. The question now for Sligo is can a team which was liable to collapse in a game like this sustain pressure and apply their own over 70 minutes. That is the core of it. Galway are coming up here to beat Sligo, win Connacht and win an All-Ireland. We are turning out on Sunday to beat Galway."
And maybe this is the summer that it will happen. The season of shocks and all that.
"I heard that all the TV pundits last weekend hotly tipped Galway to beat us," says Moran. "I suppose that's not surprising. All I can say is that we will go out and compete for 70 minutes and if that is good enough to win it and that's considered a shock, so be it. We won't mind. There are some great young fellas in the Sligo set-up now, they've a bit of class about them. We've been finding out about ourselves along the way."
