Mayo are football's great romantics.
Eleven All-Ireland final defeats since the last time they lifted Sam Maguire in 1951. Six in the last decade alone. But still they believe in happy ever after.
Aidan O'Shea has been there for all six of those big-day break-ups. The towering forward has an equally high profile and has often been a lightning rod for criticism when Mayo fall short. His failure to score in an All-Ireland final is mentioned more often than his three All-Stars.
Many 32-year-olds with 14 years on the inter-county clock would surely be tempted to say to hell to with it. But the Breaffy man seems to be thriving under new manager Kevin McStay.
O'Shea was one of Mayo's star performers in last Sunday's Allianz Football League final win over Galway, winning four frees and assisting the same number of points for team-mates.
After the 2021 decider defeat to Tyrone, McStay wrote in the Irish Times that "nobody can agree where Mayo should play him and what his best position is, yet he has been playing for over a decade. Maybe Mayo have done O'Shea a disservice here." The new boss may have solved the problem himself.
For Lee Keegan, O'Shea's former team-mate and unwanted joint-holder of the losing finals record, the answer has been surprisingly simple. Mayo are finally playing to his strengths: winning and maintaining possession.
"We're getting the best out of Aidan O'Shea, because we're kicking in the ball," Keegan said bluntly, at the launch of The Sunday Game's championship coverage.
"We tried Aidan O'Shea at full-forward for many years but the problem was our game plan was around running it. If you're a full-forward like Aidan, why would you want to move for it when you have strike runners like Oisin [Mullin] or Paddy [Durcan] or whoever coming on the end of a move?
"Now, all of a sudden, it gives Aidan that dynamic or that confidence that, 'You know what, if I make a run, more than likely I'm going to get the ball'. So that gives confidence to Aidan that the guys back on the '45 are looking at him and it also gives confidence that we're not just going to continuously run it and run it and run it.
"It's the same with Con O'Callaghan in the second-half on Sunday, Dublin finally kicked the ball in directly and you can see the damage it does when you have a big target man on the edge of the square. It can really hurt teams."
Mayo begin their championship campaign against Roscommon on Sunday, just seven days after beating Galway.
The new championship format means the Green and Red would play anywhere between six and nine games to reach an All-Ireland final, depending on whether they were knocked out in Connacht and where they finished in their group at that stage.
RTÉ Sport columnist Keegan thinks resting players will be crucial to his former team-mates' chances this season but he would expect manager McStay not to do that until a provincial final against Sligo, London, Leitrim or New York.
"Kevin has made no secret of where he wants to go with the team and what expectations are, so I fully expect Kevin to target provincial glory as well," he said.
"My biggest worry for Kevin is trying to keep that freshness towards the latter end of the year when games and coming thick and fast and the competition is getting stronger. It’s all well and good going really hard now, but there has to be a bigger picture for Mayo and where they are at.
"Realistically, if they get over these two games they can start then to look a bit more further ahead. That's no disrespect to the other side of the group. The Division 4 sides are on the far side, and that’s probably the flaw with the system at the moment - the three best teams are on the one side in Connacht.
"I’d like to see them go hard for these next two games and then maybe start looking at rotation for the next game or two and see how things are going then. If they lose [to Roscommon or Galway] it's not detrimental either, it just means a bit more planning again.
"Not just through Connacht, I think teams are going to have to rotate throughout the championship and then try and get a peak squad towards the latter end. The season is just so tight, if you get injuries now... You could potentially have to win 10 games to win an All-Ireland from now on. So it’s not going to be a set squad for the full year because it just won’t be possible for Mayo to win an All-Ireland [that way].
"For most other teams, and predominantly Ulster, you’re going to have to try and bring guys in week-in week-out to try and combat that and get through the season.
"It feels like the games will suit the more squad-depth panels at the moment but for the weaker it just feels like they could be weaker because they don't have the players to do it week-in week-out."
Watch Mayo v Roscommon in the Connacht Football Championship on Sunday from 3.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on RTÉ.ie/Sport and the RTÉ News app or listen to live commentary on RTÉ Radio 1
