Sligo coach Colm McGee is hoping that his side can hit form at just the right time as they prepare for their Connacht championship quarter-final with heavyweights Mayo.
The Yeats County travel to Hastings Insurance MacHale Park on 6 April for a game where they will be heavy underdogs.
Their League Division 3 campaign got off to a bad start with three consecutive defeats, but Sligo stopped the rot with a draw away to Fermanagh before they put together a string of three wins in a row to round the league off.
A midtable league finish is not exactly what they would have targeted but given their start, it represents a decent turnaround and McGee is hoping that his side can continue their upward trajectory against Mayo.
"We absolutely have work to do," McGee told RTÉ Sport. "But I don't think you're going to get any mentor or part of any management team who are going to say we are the finished article. Far from that we absolutely have work to do.
"We haven't hit massive form. So the hope would be that if we do we'll be hitting it at the right time. But we have to focus on the next 10-12 days and the challenge of Mayo away, it doesn't come much tougher than that."
Defeat against Mayo would see Sligo drop to the Tailteann Cup, a competition that gives them a realistic chance of claiming silverware, one of the big markers that McGee has set down for his side as they seek continued improvement.
"What is the next step up? There's different versions of that answer, you know, maybe National League will be one version of that," he said. "Try and get promoted, which obviously we haven't achieved just yet.
"The next stage that we have a rattle at a provincial championship and we'll see where that takes us.
"But Sligo the last two or three years, it was Tailteann Cup semi-final. Last year, the Tailteann Cup semi-final after extra-time to a fine Down team.
"So it would be nice to get back to some level of a final, to maybe get to a position where we can challenge for silverware, but obviously that's very much putting the cart before the horse. We have a lot of a lot of ground to cover between now and then."
While Mayo represent a major test for Sligo and they have the safety net of the Tailteann Cup, McGee and the rest of the coaching staff are trying to plot a path towards a championship upset.
"We probably need to be just a bit more controlled," he said when asked how his side will approach the Connacht quarter-final.
"Giving away the ball in Division Three will probably get punished, maybe one out of three times. If you give that away to the likes of the sharpshooters that Mayo have, like Ryan O'Donoghue and Jordan Flynn, you’re going to get punished and punished severely.
"We know that we were aware of it but it saying it, it sounds very simple. But obviously the reality is going to hit us in the face and in just over a week's time but it's absolutely a challenge we’re looking forward to.
"This will be our barometer to see where we're at and wherever it takes us, we'll be ready for whatever comes down the track. We're very much looking forward to it."
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