IT'S NOT always possible to find great significance in any given championship match but Sunday's Connacht first-round tie between Galway and Mayo in Tuam may turn out to be a turning point for football in the west.

For a start it was noticeable that a Connacht match could command such widespread national attention. This was largely due to Mayo's All-Ireland exploits last year but also the compelling history of Galway-Mayo matches in Tuam.

A further reason is the gradual rehabilitation of the west over the last three years. It is no longer out of the question that the province's representatives can mount a meaningful challenge at All-Ireland level. Consequently a Connacht match can be seen to be as relevant to the season's destiny as a fixture in any other province.

Only a few years ago, in the wake of those two disastrous Mayo defeats in All-Ireland semi-finals in 1992 and '93, the rationale doing the rounds was that the pace of the game in the province was too slow and teams emerging into the white heat of Croke Park were ill-prepared to tackle counties whose provinces existed on a higher plane of fitness and technique.

The weakness in the argument was that at the very time it was current, Ulster counties were pouring through the breach engineered by Down almost overnight in 1991. If a team from Ulster could do it without warning, the notion that a mediocre environment subverted a team's ability to compete at All-Ireland level was debunked.

As for the argument that Ulster is more intensely competitive than Connacht a consideration that used to be advanced as an explanation for perennial failure rather than success the obvious counter is that Connacht is no less competitive than Munster.

The problem would appear to have been more to do with the fact that at a time when well prepared Ulster teams were exploiting the new climate of self-belief in the province, Connacht, whose teams should have been doing the same thing, had instead deteriorated into a shambles. Radical explanations were being sought where simple ones were more applicable.

The dawning of realisation came with Leitrim's success in 1994. One of the counties least favoured by nature - small population, high emigration, no tradition - Leitrim demonstrated that with organisation, a county could make the best of its lot.

Leitrim's best was almost certainly not going to be enough to win big but the vivid romanticism of a first Connacht title since 1927 and the nature of the team's defeat by Dublin - emphatic maybe but never supine and in its own way proudly defiant - shamed those counties with comparatively abundant resources.

Galway's awakening the following year was marked by an intermittently good Croke Park appearance but one inhibited by a slight lack of confidence which also helped dictate the vocabulary of appropriate response. The three-point defeat by Tyrone in a match they had every chance to win was earmarked as "encouraging".

Mayo's emergence last year confirmed the steadily rising graph of Connacht's fortunes but again felt short of what should have been achieved. This year there is only one way Connacht can go if progress is to be maintained, the winning of the All-Ireland.

Against that backdrop, Sunday's result is significant. Mayo's victory sets them up in the province. Despite the obvious caution against complacency, a team that could negotiate the challenge of Galway in Tuam should be able to cope with home matches against, probably, Leitrim and Roscommon.

The significance is that should Mayo retain their provincial title, it will be the first time in a long time that a Connacht team is in a position to build on a previous year's breakthrough.

Mayo themselves, in 1985 and '89 Roscommon, in 1980 and '91, and Galway in 1995 all laid down substantial markers for the future only to lose their titles in the province the following year.

That prospect of unrealised potential was at the heart of Mayo's forebodings going into the match. An early championship match in an unforgiving venue posed a very real threat of being abandoned in May with no chance to build on the foundations of 1996 for another 12 months.

That they surmounted the obstacle in an exciting match where score-taking dwarfed the wides' totals and in which Galway put up a high-speed challenge added satisfaction to the basic reaction of relief.

The curse of Tuam didn't cut much ice with either team although its lifting enthused Mayo supporters no end. Recent years have seen cupboards full of these statistical quirks being cleaned out.

Even in the west, Leitrim's title was the first for 67 years and Mayo's win over Kerry last year bridged a 30-year gap since Connacht champions had last defeated their Munster counterparts. Football has featured two new All-Ireland champions this decade.

Hurling has seen a whole host of records updated: Clare's first All-Ireland since 1914, Kerry's first championship win for 67 years, Cork's first home defeat in the championship since the 1920s.

In the light of all this, breaking a sequence of a mere 46 years doesn't seem quite as epoch-making. Having done it, Mayo would do well to turn their attention to what the 1951 team went on to do after winning that Connacht final in Tuam retain the All-Ireland.

There's a fair road ahead. Aside from the tricky assignments in store in Connacht, manager John Manghan knows that the team will have to develop considerably to pose a threat in the All-Ireland series. The team's development throughout last year's championship is a cheering precedent and Sunday's match showed Mayo taking their first jump at a considerably higher level than they did last year in London.

In other words it was not so much a top-class display as a good start which - as all attentive students of cliche know - is half the battle.