Viewed through the national lens, the Galway-Mayo rivalry may have the higher

Mayo v Roscommon.

It is, on the quiet, one of the more spiteful rivalries in Gaelic football.

The rivalry has given us territorial disputes - Ballaghaderreen is Ireland's equivalent of the Donbass.

It's given us instances of wanton vandalism - Enon Gavin pulling down the crossbar at MacHale Park.

Ostentatious displays of disrespect - after beating Galway in the 2004 Connacht semi-final, Conor Mortimer was asked by Midwest Radio about the looming threat of Roscommon in the Connacht final.

"Ahh...

wouldn't worry too much about Roscommon," Mort replied casually, live on air, after a brief pause.

In an interview with Off the Ball's Eoin Sheahan, Frankie Dolan recounted the scene in the dressing room after that '04 Connacht final, when John Maughan came in to speak to the Roscommon players.

This scenario is usually the cue for heartwarming content attesting to the class of the victorious manager.

Not so, in this case.

"John came in and he was just blowing about how good Mayo were and what they were going to do and all this type of bulls**t," recalled Dolan.

Dolan added that "there were a couple of hard boys there that wouldn't like to be listening to that sort of stuff.

I was looking around the dressing room and I was surprised Maughan didn't get a belt."
There is also deep suspicion of outsiders.

After a dispiriting defeat to their neighbours in a league game, Shannonside co-commentator Gay Sheerin, a veteran of many Roscommon-Mayo clashes, launched a memorable tirade against the very notion of Mayo men managing the Roscommon football team, observing of Kevin McStay and Liam McHale that "they hated me - and they hated Roscommon".

Five months later, the Mayo duo guided Roscommon to the Connacht title.

Before the 2011 Connacht final, Liam Hayes argued that the notion of a 'big two' in Connacht was a misnomer and was disrespectful to Roscommon.

Never averse to winding up Mayo, the former Meath footballer went further and remarked that when he was a lad, he had always perceived that it was Roscommon who were second after Galway in the Connacht pecking order - with Mayo only third.

2011 wasn't a particularly opportune moment to make this point given that Mayo were about to establish an unprecedented period of dominance in Connacht.

And to some extent, it could be written off as the impressions of a '70s kid stuck in a time-warp.

It is lost to the mists of time, the degree to which Mayo had slipped into irrelevance between the 1951 All-Ireland victory and their reappearance in the final in 1989.

In the 1952-88 period, Mayo won just six Connacht championships, compared to Roscommon's tally of nine.

Aside from the Emergency, the late 1970s was the zenith of Roscommon football, and it also coincided with a particularly bleak era in Mayo's existence.

That culminated in their epic push for the All-Ireland title in 1980, during which campaign they battered Mayo by 14 points in the Connacht decider.

The latter had gone the whole of the '70s without even winning a provincial title and had managed just two in the previous quarter century.

Mayo were a whisker away from reaching the All-Ireland final in 1985, though it wasn't until the end of the 80s, when John O'Mahony assumed the manager's job, that they properly re-established themselves as a full-time kingpin within the province.

They've essentially been vying with Galway for supremacy in Connacht ever since, with Roscommon generally sneaking an occasional title, usually after an 'ambush' of some sort.

Ballaghaderreen is officially within county Roscommon but for GAA purposes, remains within Mayo.

The dispute goes back to the 1890s, when John Dillon, then MP for East Mayo, decided that he and the other local traders would rather the town be located in Roscommon, where they could avail of the more friendly (ie, lower) rates regime on offer.

The local club was already established within Mayo GAA and decided they weren't on board with Dillon's machinations.

Ballaghaderreen FC are in the Roscommon and District League but the Gaelic footballers weren't for budging.

The GAA, as they tend to do, remained loyal to the county boundaries established by the English colonial administrators of the Elizabethan era.

(By rights, there should be some silverware named after Sir Henry Sydney.)
The town has been split ever since.

In the early 1990s, Roscommon GAA proposed a motion at Congress to take Ballaghaderreen altogether, reasoning that it was part of their county for every other purpose.

Sligo sided with the Rossies, but the other three Connacht counties opposed them and the motion was rejected.

Andy Moran had come off the bench to score a crucial point in Mayo's comeback.

In his article the following Friday, McGarry wrote matter-of-factly that, "Andy is a Roscommon supporter.

His people - seed, breed and generation - are Roscommon people."
McGarry portrayed Moran's Mayo career as something into which he was conscripted by virtue of the GAA's bureaucratic obstinacy.

He added that, "It also means there are times when our Hezbollah wing can be difficult to contain, particularly when they see Roscommon men from the town help Mayo to great heights."
Said Hezbollah wing unleashed an aural bombardment on Moran in the All-Ireland quarter-final meeting between the two sides in 2017.

It was unusual to hear a single individual player on an opposition team to be booed so heavily and relentlessly in a championship match.

Moran, who finished that campaign with the Footballer of the Year award, was at the back end of his long playing career with Mayo at that stage and had played against Roscommon numerous times.

The barracking he received that day was traced back to an FBD League game that winter when Moran kissed the Mayo crest after scoring.

Crest-kissing as a form of celebration in Gaelic football is mercifully rare and Moran's decision to do so during a FBD League game was interpreted as a pointed gesture.

Weirdly, there've only been three Mayo-Roscommon Connacht deciders this century - compared to the five in a six year span between 1988 and 1993.

With Galway football in slumber, Mayo-Roscommon became the default pairing for much of the Charlton era.

The 1989 provincial decider, which went to a replay, was especially memorable, Jimmy Burke sealing the win for Mayo with a comical goal worthy of a slapstick reel.

He fresh-aired the initial attempt under pressure and then knocked the ball into the net with his standing leg, while in the process of falling.

The '92 final ended up on A Question of Sport's 'What Happened Next?' segment due to the aforementioned Gavin swinging off the crossbar.

The 1993 Connacht final - described as "desultory" by Keith Duggan - may well have the distinction of being the poorest provincial final ever played.

There are some oddities to the rivalry in the modern era.

Bizarrely, all three of Roscommon's championship victories over Mayo in the 21st century have come when the latter were league champions - 2001, 2019 and 2023.

Watch Mayo v Roscommon in the Connacht Football Championship on Sunday from 3.45pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player.

Follow our live blog on RTÉ.ie/sport and RTÉ News app and listen to Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
Watch highlights on The Saturday Game and The Sunday Game from 9.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player.

Follow a live blog on all matches on the RTÉ News app and on rte.ie/sport.

Listen to Saturday Sport and Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1