SIX WEEKS after the championship started, after 21 matches that have resulted in seven teams making a permanent exit and 12 teams dumped into the qualifiers, Mayo only now come into the football championship, the last and presumably by no means least.

Someone said the championship is an organ of discrimination. Mayo's Connacht semi-final against Sligo in Castlebar on Sunday has the added novelty of being unbalanced in terms of the prize on offer. Win or lose Mayo are still in the championship; Sligo must win or else it's the Tommy Murphy Cup.

Sligo go in as reigning Connacht champions, and also benefit from the warm-up against London on May 25th. However, that's really where their advantage ends. They haven't beaten Mayo in the championship in eight years, and haven't beaten them in Castlebar since 1975.

Mayo have benefited from a slow build-up. They spent the last week in May at a training camp in Portugal, and go into Sunday's game with only minimal injury concerns. The lay-off has helped forward Conor Mortimer to get over his quad muscle injury, and he's now sure to feature on Sunday.

"Yeah, it's been a long wait, the first year ever we had to wait so long," says Mortimer. "We're generally out early. So it's a bit different. I don't think it's impacted on our preparation. We've played a lot of club games in between.

"And I suppose it just gives us more time to get things right. We'd a week's training in Portugal, and that went well, but you don't really know how beneficial these things are until you play championship. There are other teams that went away and got beaten in the first round. Last year, we were out early, didn't get things too right, and didn't last too long in the championship."

Mortimer, like the rest of his team-mates, has been able to sit back and watch the championship unfold. And although Mayo are well fancied to beat Sligo, who had a poor league campaign and ended up relegated to Division Four, he's taking nothing for granted.

"I think it's been on a very even keel so far. No one has really stood out. But the longer you're in it, the better teams get. The likes of Dublin, Kerry. But it's open enough at the minute. The next three to four weeks will start telling a lot more.

"But Sligo won the Connacht championship last year, so regardless of how their league has gone, they'll be hard to beat. If we play well enough then we should be good enough. We have the talent there. But it's all on the day.

"They had a poor league, but they'd a lot of boys injured, and performed quite well in some recent challenges. And they perform well against big teams. They've a lot more to lose than we do, as such, given they don't come into the qualifiers unless they win. It's our first game as well, and you'll never be as fluent as you would two or three games down the line."

The most recent meetings between the teams have been close, and the feeling is Mayo have yet to hit full stride since John O'Mahony took over as manager at the end of 2006. It's Mortimer's sixth year on the senior panel, and he admits it's taken a while for O'Mahony's influence to fully penetrate.

"Every manager has their own way. He's a proven pedigree. For us to get there, we have to follow his lead. I think the last few weeks, since we went to Portugal, and came back, there's a different bite around. But it's a relaxed bite. Not a nervous bite like we had last year. Coming into the first round last year we didn't know what was going on, after being in an All-Ireland final the year before. Managers had changed, and we felt very conscious going into our first game. This year it's much more settled. There's not a lot of expectation either. Everyone is just looking forward to it."