With a draw and two losses before this afternoon’s NHL Division 3A Round 4 meeting with Monaghan at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park, it’s safe to say that this spring campaign wasn’t going to plan for Mayo. Today’s overwhelming win over the Farney County was, then, as welcome as it was necessary, providing renewed hope that League relegation for a second successive year can yet be avoided.

Today’s game was one-way traffic from start to finish. An early Cormac Phillips point was followed straight away afterwards by a goal from Jason Coyne and the floodgates soon opened.

A point from Daniel Huane preceded our second goal, this one scored by Eoin Delaney. With just six minutes played, we were already nearly out the gap.

Our third goal arrived on 17 minutes. Seán Kenny grabbed this one, our lead having now swelled to ten points.

Adrian Phillips bagged our fourth major just past the half-hour mark. We took a yawning 4-14 to 0-7 lead into the dressing room at the interval.

Daniel Huane got our fifth and final goal soon after the restart. This upped the gap between the teams to twenty points, the result now well beyond doubt. From there we sailed effortlessly to the finish, at which stage we had a full 27 points to spare over the visitors.

Monaghan came into this match as table-toppers, with Mayo rooted to the bottom, and the gas thing is that this is still the position this evening, though only because that daft head-to-head rule sees us sitting below Fermanagh.

As you can see from the table, though, despite our still lowly position we’re only one of two teams in the division with a positive points difference.

What we need now, of course, is another win, which would guarantee our safety in the division. We’ve only one match left in which to get it, however, and that’s against Louth. Win that one and we’re fine.

We might even make the play-offs, though we’d also need a favour from Monaghan (who’d need to beat Roscommon next weekend) to do this. After today, though, I’m not sure how well disposed they’d be on that front.

It’s also worth noting that next Saturday’s match against Louth is another away fixture – it’s set to be played at the Louth GAA Centre of Excellence in Darver. Our two losses, both narrow ones, came on the road so a first away win of the campaign will be required if we’re to be playing in this division once again next year.

Well done to the lads today and here’s for more of the same against the Wee County next weekend.