Championship games in London are typically rich in novelty. Rife with the kind of tidbits and trivia in which colour writers revel.
Players playing against their own county is a fairly standard one. That's almost passé at this stage. In recent times, we've seen decorated legends in their mid-thirties and now living abroad coming out of retirement for one last championship hurrah.
The crowd itself is always a curiosity. The marquee adjacent to the ground always helped create a party-like ambience. In the past, when London were perhaps less competitive, the atmosphere had an almost village fete feel. It felt like an emigrants meet-up rather than a high-octane championship match.
Mike Finnerty of the Mayo News has previously relayed the tale of Mayo's nerve-jangling extra-time win over London in 2011, when a fair portion of the away support were complacently drinking cider with their backs to the game until they belatedly realised that all wasn't going to plan on the field.
There's usually a large dollop of London-based support for the visiting team. Recognising this, Enda Kenny used the 2016 Mayo-London clash as an opportunity to promote a 'Remain' vote in Britain's EU referendum, only for the TV vox-poppers to happen upon an Irish-accented man in a Mayo jersey telling everyone he was voting 'Out'.
However, Sunday's meeting of London and Sligo in Ruislip presents us with a properly novel spectacle. That of two brothers playing against each other in an inter-county championship match.
Castleconnor's David Carrabine played for the Sligo U21's in their Connacht final loss to Roscommon in 2012. Not long after that match, he was invited over by a London-based club and nailed down a job in the city.
He's been over there ever since. At first, he resisted the call to join up with the London senior team, citing work commitments. Last year, however, he answered the call and featured in the 2017 championship campaign which ended after a one-point loss to Carlow in the qualifiers.
This year, with his native county arriving in the English capital for their quinquennial clash with the Exiles, Carrabine finds himself in a duel with a member of his own family.
His brother Sean, eight years his junior, a member of Sligo's U21 side last year, has broken into the senior squad in time for the visit to Ruislip.
While Sean has usually been deployed as a sub in 2018, he managed to make good use of his time on the pitch in the spring. Coming off the bench, he lobbed over a crucial point in the very low scoring draw with Offaly in the penultimate game. In the do-or-die relegation encounter against Derry the week after, he came on to score a steadying point in Sligo's two point win.
Two days out from the game, RTÉ Sport spoke to Sean Carrabine and asked him the key question.
How likely is it that Sligo and London will finish with 14 men apiece following a flare-up between the two Carrabines?
"(He laughs) Ah... I wouldn't rule that out now!"
Does the fact that your brother is in the opposition team actually intensify the desire to perform and to win?
"Ah, it kinda does. It brings that small bit of extra edge to it where you want to get on the pitch and perform as well as you can. There's a good crowd coming over from home. You just want to give a good account of yourself so it does bring an extra edge to it. But you can't get away from the fact that we have to win. But I know it's in the back of my head.
"I kind of feel he's under more pressure that I am, to be honest. I've nothing to lose. He's the older guard so he has to make sure he's still the boss. I'm kind of going in there under the radar."
This is obviously a potentially divisive time for the family. Both Mam and Dad are bound for west London this weekend. But how are the parents approaching this diplomatic dilemma? Are they unequivocally backing Sligo?
"Mum is nervous about it. She's anxious about it. Dad is very chilled about it. My three sisters are very excited... Dad is a proud Sligo man so I'm sure he's supporting Sligo. Whereas Mum hopes it's a draw. Dad would be hoping Sligo would win but he hopes David puts in a very good performance."
"I try to get over and visit David a bit but I can't really with commitments with Sligo and football. We went over to a United game for my birthday last year. That was good and it was the last time I was over. Mum and Dad get over a lot and see his games and he tries to get home as much as he can. I don't see him as much as I'd like to but we talk a lot on the phone."
As unlikely as it seems, brother v brother clashes aren't unheard of, even at senior inter-county level.
The 1952 All-Ireland football final was a landmark affair for more than one reason.
Cavan, then the undisputed, runaway kingpins of Ulster football, won their fifth and most recent All-Ireland title. (Despite winning relatively little in the past 50 years, Cavan will remain atop the historical roll of honour in Ulster for a very long time yet thanks to their trojan efforts in the first half of the 20th century.)
They beat Meath by four points after a replay and brothers Des and Liam Maguire collected All-Ireland medals. Nothing too strange there except for the fact that their brother Brendan was lined out opposite them and had to make do with the runners-up prize.
The family initially lived in Bingfield in Cavan, the site of the county team's infamous collective training sessions (a new and disturbing development in Gaelic football according to the purists of the day), but subsequently moved to Oldfield in Meath.
Brendan alone switched his allegiance to Meath and would later emigrate to the United States where he was twice elected to the position of Sheriff of San Mateo in California as a 50+ year old in the 1980s. His re-election in 1986 was especially impressive as he had died of a heart attack two months before polling day.
The weekend sees a first championship start for Sligo's new management team, led by Tyrone native Cathal Corey, a man who has previously worked closely with Jim McGuinness and guided Glenties to an Ulster club final.
Carrabine says one of Corey's key missions is to foster a new mentality in the county.
"He wants players to express themselves and doesn't want them to hide. He wants Sligo to have confidence when they play and have a bit of arrogance about them.
"Because our image has to change now. You see at underage level, it's improving. But at senior level we've won nothing. We haven't won Connacht in ten years. He wants that to change and he wants us to be feared.
"Sligo have been too nice down through the years. It's hard because Mayo, Galway and Roscommon have been very good the last few years. But I think the mentality in Sligo hasn't been the same the last few years and he's trying to change that.
"I can't say too much about the senior team because this is my first year involved. But watching games, I just think the mentality wasn't there for the last few years."
The Yeats County endured a mixed league campaign but finished on an uplifting note as they came from behind to beat Derry on the final day in Markievicz Park, ensuring their survival and condemning their opponents to the bottom tier for 2019.
Corey indicated that he didn't really have ambitions for the league beyond blooding players and retaining their Division 3 status but Carrabine accepts that their league form was patchy.
"He wanted to get to know the team. We'd a mixed league campaign to be honest with you. There were games we should have won like the Longford and Offaly games. In the Derry game, we really performed. That was our standout performance. We stayed up, which is the main thing, and a lot of players got game-time and experience.
Another narrative thread here is the small matter of the pair's last championship meeting five years ago. London had taken teams to the brink enough times down the years to suggest that a Connacht championship scalp was coming.
Sligo suffered the ignominy when it eventually occurred, losing 1-12 to 0-14 in May 2013, a traumatic result which marked the beginning of the end of Kevin Walsh's otherwise successful if often frustrating reign.
Has the loss featured much in Sligo's pre-match preparation this time around?
"We've touched on it alright. We know what happened, like. We've to set right what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again.
"A couple of the older players touched on it today, saying it was a lonely spot down there in 2013. But, it's largely a new crop of players so we don't know what it was like. And we're going over there with a fearless attitude."
