Poor football on a dour day. Cold drizzle, no goals and not even the blaze of a good row to warm us. You would have to be a winner or a westerner to have taken any pleasure from yesterday's All-Ireland football semi-final, in which Mayo defeated Offaly 0-13 to 0-7.

In retrospect, Offaly will feel that the gods conspired against them. A series of draws in Leinster meant they had only a fortnight to readjust to the dizzy altitude which comes with being surprise provincial championship. As if that struggle for focus were not enough, it spilled rain all day, which robbed Offaly of the best parts of their game plan and the speediest elements of their forward line.

A team which has averaged about 19 points a game through the championship scored just seven points yesterday. They played most of the right notes, but the tune sounded sour. John Kenny hit a series of chest high passes in lines parallel to the right sideline. Mostly they met the chest of Pat Holmes of Mayo. So it went.

Mayo, for their part, ground this win out of hard work. They tackled enthusiastically and effectively in all areas of the pitch. They took scores, as opposed to wides, at a pretty lamentable ratio, but ground out so much possession that it hardly mattered.

Still. These occasions are about survival, not aesthetics. Mayo duly advanced to their second successive All-Ireland final, an achievement which is as much a testimony to this team's doughty persistence as promise of a rising tide in the west.

This year's All-Ireland final will have a decidedly old fashioned look about it. Kerry and Mayo are names redolent of the catch and kick era. It is 24 years since Connacht and Munster clashed in an All-Ireland senior final, the early 1950s since Mayo last took home the big prize. A sign of Kerry's withered fortunes is that, for perhaps the first time this century, they send a team into an All-Ireland final without one senior medallist in their ranks.

The winning of it is anybody's. Mayo will come to Croke Park later this month not as novelty acts but as gnarled campaigners who have only to look back 12 months to see the last time they beat Kerry in a big game in Croke Park. The resultant rise in expectations in the west will bring a new level of pressure Mayo's way.

In the immediate aftermath yesterday, the business of talking up the opposition had already started. Pat Fallon brushed down his cliches, slipped on his "woe is us" face and offered his thoughts.

"Kerry were fantastic the way they beat Cavan last week."

Maurice Sheridan paid tribute.

"Obviously having turned in such a fine performance, Kerry will be favourites."

Amidst the steady rain and pressure of yesterday, Offaly had their work cut out. They left behind the glorious form which brought them dancing through the Leinster final some Sundays back and, ironically for a team which had scored so freely that afternoon, they were blighted by paralysis of the full forward line.

Mayo had scored six points and registered nine wides (half of their gloriously prodigal total) before Offaly even mustered a score. Mayo's curious decision to play Liam McHale at full forward produced the best dividends early on.

As the game unfolded with an obscene glut of possession coming the way of the Mayo forwards, they seemed as reluctant to communicate with each other as they had been with anyone else last week. Player after player ballooned balls wide as colleagues stood by unattended.

Even as they missed McHale's wise distribution from midfield, Mayo must have been quietly grateful to McHale for at least keeping things fluid in those early passages. He scored the first point of the day and won a smattering of early ball from Larry Carroll.

Afterwards McHale was inclined to the view that form coming into the game had been of little relevance. With the ball slipping about like a greased pig and the challenges weighing in big and hefty, it was just about two teams on a football field.

"People were reading too much into the Leinster final. We played Galway on the 25th of May and it was a great game. We are capable of playing good football. They are capable of it too. We played badly against Sligo, but the Sligo game didn't enter our heads today.

"We know that was a better performance. We have four weeks now to step it up again and make a serious challenge in the All-Ireland."

The Mayo dressing room pretty much reflected McHale's mood. Gone are the days when reaching an All-Ireland final was sufficient justification for the lighting of bonfires in Connacht.

Four weeks left of a turbulent season. Mayo have a relentlessness about them, a will to survive which we have only seen in one other team this year. Kerry.