Rossies' Carlsberg weekend and Armagh date with destiny

Needless to say, Roscommon supporters were quick to contact me on Saturday evening. Just to check in on how I was, which was much appreciated.

I was informed by one correspondent that there was a party scheduled for the cemetery beside the Hyde, although it was Mayo's grave that they were dancing on.

No doubt, it was a Carlsberg weekend from the Rossies' perspective, with their superb win over Tyrone in Omagh and then watching Mayo being dumped out in an agonising fashion in Castlebar.

Another MacHale Park letdown and a reminder that having your home ground as your bogey ground is probably not ideal. (I'm thinking now there was method to Aidan O'Shea's thinking when he turned down the point last year against Cork and took third spot in the group instead).

The sense of deflation here is fairly acute.

You can lament the championship format all you want. And for sure, there's something particularly odd about the fact that Mayo seemed to have spent most of the summer beating Roscommon and yet find themselves out of the championship earlier than their neighbours for the first time since 2018.

But the system, wacky and all as it is, was known at the outset.

The central fact is that Mayo were in a winning position in injury-time in three big championship games this summer and failed to win any of them.

It's a team in transition at the moment and I feel they did make progress in plenty of respects this year but this inability to close out games is a tendency they'll have to nip in the bud sooner rather than later. It's an easy rut to fall into. We've given Armagh enough grief about it in the last half-decade.

Our year is done but the provincial neighbours still have a puncher's chance. Whether they can land any more decisive blows is