GAELIC GAMES:WHEN THE candy-floss fog settled over McHale Park back in February and nixed the second half of the original stab Mayo and Dublin took at their league encounter, you'd have had a hard time convincing those in the stands they'd next see each other at the tail-end of a heatwave.

Or that by the time it came around, neither team would be clear as to where their campaign was going to end up. Or that the Mayo County Board wouldn’t be charging a penny on the gate whether you were at the first match or not. Yet that’s where we are, seven weeks older and not a great deal the wiser.

In keeping with the hotch-potch division as a whole, both Mayo and Dublin have lost matches they might have won and scratched points out of tight situations on nights that weren’t their nights. Pat Gilroy said all along the league structure would mean teams finding themselves getting to the business end of the campaign with an equal chance of being relegated and making the play-offs, which is precisely where Mayo find themselves.

Win tonight and they can play with relative abandon next Sunday in Kerry, a semi-final spot within their grasp and plenty of clear water between them and trouble. Lose this one though and they’re in for a nervous journey down the west coast.

Dublin don’t have relegation to worry about but the defeat in Newry a fortnight ago has left them vulnerable to missing out on the semi-finals.

Gilroy has no strong feelings one way or the other about winning the league but he does want the extra two games that would be involved. A defeat tonight and he’ll have to go to Cork next weekend in search of a win.

“It’s an important game,” he says. “These last two games are tough and you want to get the two points because it will get out at least another game after it. If we’re getting good, competitive matches that’s where we want to be. We’ll have a good team out and we’ll be going for it to try and get the play-off place. It would allow you to use more players then if we could get a couple more games. You get so few matches that you’re always looking for more.”

Dublin have Barry Cahill back starting his first game since the All-Ireland final but look likely to be without Alan Brogan for the next month as his calf strain is more serious than first thought. Time was, a man in Gilroy’s position would be hoping to get to the end of the league with as many of his championship 15 nailed to the mast as possible. Not these days. There’s just too big a gap between the end of the league and the start of the serious stuff.

The league final is on April 29th, their first Leinster Championship game is on June 3rd, with another month after that until the provincial semi-final, assuming they reach it. That’s two games in 12 weeks after the league decider and they’d still only be in a Leinster final. He can take or leave winning the league – intra-squad matches are where his team will be picked.

“I wouldn’t say the league has nothing to do with the summer but from my point of view the league is most important to make sure you have the right number of resources and that you develop some extra bits of ways of playing. The most important part is that you develop your whole squad so that you have two guys for every position. We’ve tried a few fellas in positions they haven’t played before throughout this league so that just gives us a few different options.

“Going into the All-Ireland last year, we weren’t bad on the option front but we were tight in certain positions and we’ve been really trying to develop that through the league. So I don’t think winning the league necessarily sets you up for the championship.”

He’d hardly turn his nose up at it all the same.