It has been a good week at the office for Connacht football. On Monday, Crossmolina broke the hoodoo that seemed to hang around the neck of every Mayo team in Croke Park. On Tuesday evening, on their victory parade home, the team walked across the bridge on the Shannon at Tarmanbarry, and when they crossed the Mayo/Roscommon border at Ballaghaderreen.

It was almost a formal banishing of the demons that have afflicted Mayo teams in All-Ireland finals, especially in the last 10 to 12 years. The senior teams lost finals in 1989, 1996 and 1997, the under-21s in 1994 and 1995 and the minors in 1991, 1999 and 2000.

Throw in Ballina, Castlebar and Knockmore also losing All-Ireland club finals in the 1990s and you have to excuse the Crossmolina lads taking extra pleasure in last Monday's win and all Mayo supporters having an extra spring in their step this week.

The welcome for the All-Ireland club champions was not just from the people of the parish but from the whole of Mayo.

The good news for Connacht had begun on Sunday evening when it emerged that, as a result of the last round of games in the National League and the exclusion of Tyrone from the competition, four teams from the province will contest this week's semi-finals. This guarantees another national title will cross the Shannon in 2001.

This has led, on the one hand, to a feeling of quiet satisfaction for those who have worked hard in the province to make the breakthrough at national level, a breakthrough that seemed to some to be very far away a few years ago; and, on the other, to a naive belief that Connacht teams are going to win everything in the next few years.

Heavy defeats to Connacht sides in All-Ireland semi-finals had in the early 1990s led to a general negativity about the standard of football in the west. Even though this negativity was confirmed every time a team from the west was beaten, in a final in particular, the coaching committees of the counties concentrated more on the "solution" rather than the problem.

At the prompting of the Connacht council, extensive coaching schemes were set up. Schools of excellence and development squads at under-14 and under-15 level were set up, and these young footballers, who were brought to venues like Castlebar, Sligo, Roscommon, Carrick-on-Shannon and Tuam, were given the best of coaching in the summer.

As well as getting advice from the top footballers, managers, referees and medical staff, the main aim was to sow the seed of ambition not only to represent their native county but to be in the winners' enclosure.

Primary and secondary schools were also a fertile area for development. In 1998, 40 under-16 footballers spent two weeks in San Francisco playing football and taking part in coaching courses. In a week in which Connacht football was in the headlines for all the right reasons, it is interesting to note that 30 under-12 players from colleges and vocational schools in the province are on a two-week tour of Australia.

Gaelic football may be an amateur sport but it opens many doors for its players. People like Joe McDonagh, Padraic Brennan, Father Tommy Towey, John McGowan, Tommy Carroll, Joe Flynn and Liam Salmon, who have been at the forefront of this hard work behind the scenes, are entitled to feel very satisfied this week.

While it is understandable that there is a new optimism in the west, some of the talk this week is way over the top. Connacht football teams are unlikely to dominate as Ulster did at the beginning of the last decade. A closer look at this year's national league, for instance, reveals that Kerry missed the league play-offs not because of All-Ireland celebrations. They fielded shadow teams for most of the pre-Christmas games while they were completing their club championships.

Other top teams like Meath, Derry and Dublin were short many of their best 15 for various reasons, and Cork, Armagh and Kildare were operating out of Division Two because of similar problems they had this time last year. In addition, Tyrone, who had blazed a trail all winter in the league, were unfortunate to be excluded because of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

The long road to this year's All-Ireland championship begins in a few weeks. It is likely to be one of the most open in years. If the new format goes ahead, it will be a new experience for everybody. The Connacht champions, whoever they may be, will complete with the best, but nothing is guaranteed. I never accepted that we were the poor relation a few years ago, and neither is the opposite true now.