The West is in dream­land – and sup­port­ers of the province’s two All-Ire­land final­ists might fear what hap­pens when the West’s awake again.

Because fans of the Gal­way hurl­ers and the Mayo foot­ballers are united in one ques­tion fol­low­ing the unex­pec­ted arrival of their teams in the All-Ireland Cham­pi­on­ship decider: has all this come a sea­son too soon?

There is little con­nect­ing the cul­tures of Mayo foot­ball and Gal­way hurl­ing. Where the foot­balling hot­beds in north Gal­way sit tight against the south Mayo bor­der, the expans­ive hurl­ing heart­lands in Gal­way are primar­ily in the east of the county.

Take Por­tumna as an example, home to the Can­ning dyn­asty and a mod­ern power loc­ally and nation­ally. It’s almost as far to MacH­ale Park, the home of Mayo foot­ball, as it is to Croke Park from the Por­tumna pitch, which is only over the bridge from Tip­per­ary.

Foot­ballers from Gal­way and Mayo often went to school together in St Jar­lath’s in Tuam, while there is a neck­lace of towns and vil­lages along the bor­der between the two counties that fizz with energy before a meet­ing between the two.

Some foot­balling people in Gal­way will tell you they have more in com­mon with Mayo people than with their hurl­ing brethren, which is test­a­ment to the vast­ness of the county’s geo­graphy and how two very dis­tinct cul­tures have grown up.

But there is a com­pel­ling com­mon trait attend­ing the pro­gress of the Gal­way hurl­ers and the Mayo foot­ballers this sum­mer – just how unex­pec­ted it has been. And with that comes the creep­ing fear that real­ity may intrude in their respect­ive finals, given the cal­ibre of the oppon­ents — both hot favour­ites — that the teams face.

At the start of the sea­son, there wouldn’t have been an expect­a­tion in either county that an All-Ire­land final appear­ance was on the hori­zon in either the short or medium-term. Gal­way made a blood­less exit from last year’s Cham­pi­on­ship, the first under return­ing man­ager Micheál Donoghue.

They lost a Lein­ster final to a mid­dling Kilkenny by eight points and then were beaten by the same mar­gin in a quarter-final against Tip­per­ary in which they never caused the even­tual cham­pi­ons a moment’s worry.

Donoghue has explained this week that a long post-sea­son allowed him and his coaches time to design a new sys­tem of play. What they tried last year didn’t work and in turn­ing to rad­ic­ally dif­fer­ent tac­tics, they were helped by a hand­ful of excit­ing young tal­ents, many of whom were part of last year’s panel for blood­ing pur­poses.

The very new­ness of play­ers like Jason Rab­bitte and Aaron Niland raises another ques­tion: will their cal­low­ness be exposed against the hardened excel­lence of Lim­er­ick on Sunday?

‘The mes­saging is that they’re not going to be judged on their first few years, so to just go out and hurl with that free­dom and aban­don­ment, and I think that’s evid­ent,’ countered Donoghue when asked last week about the inex­per­i­ence in his team.

Free­dom is a con­tested right in an All-Ire­land final, of course, and there is no cohort more eager to infringe on the rights of Gal­way’s young stars than that tower­ing Lim­er­ick defence.

It was telling on Sunday night that Jack O’Con­nor, while prais­ing Mayo’s per­form­ance against Louth the day before and high­light­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of their attack­ing young stars, men­tioned the exper­i­ence of his side.

There is no pre­par­a­tion for the sights, smells, and sounds of All-Ire­land final day, no way of truly pre­par­ing for how thin the air can get as adversity draws in.

The mes­saging from the Mayo camp after that riot­ous semi-final vic­tory wasn’t dis­sim­ilar to Donoghue’s. Andy Moran talked about Croke Park lib­er­at­ing his new­comers, with vet­eran Stephen Coen, one of the hand­ful in the Mayo squad with exper­i­ence of final day, going a step fur­ther and cred­it­ing the debutants with set­ting the stand­ards for every­one else.

‘I’m very happy with the cul­ture of the group. Of course, I will try and give guid­ance and learn­ings from the past, but these guys have their own way of doing things as well, so we’ll just sup­port them as much as pos­sible and keep going.’

Dif­fer­ent codes but the mes­sage from both the Gal­way hurl­ers and the Mayo foot­ballers is the same: you mightn’t have expec­ted to see us here, but we’re ready.

But what both Donoghue and Moran will real­ise, given their exper­i­ence of All-Ire­land final day, is that you can never be really sure of that until the game is played.

The big advant­age Donoghue enjoys is that he knows what it is to win an All-Ire­land final. He man­aged Gal­way to the 2017 vic­tory against Water­ford, whereas Moran’s extens­ive expos­ure to final day amounts to three defeats as a player.

But with both man­agers seek­ing to play up the advant­age of their young play­ers rather than cos­set­ing young stars with cau­tious talk, it seems clear that they will per­sist with the tac­tics that have brought them to this point.

That’s des­pite fears Lim­er­ick’s full-back line will bottle up Rab­bitte, and that John Kiely and Paul Kin­nerk will ensure that Cathal Man­nion isn’t allowed to drift deep and influ­ence play as he has done to such good effect in the past two matches.

Croke Park has allowed this new Gal­way team to shine – and that’s another fea­ture of the team that they share with the Mayo foot­ballers.

Moran said after Mayo defeated Cork in their quarter-final that ‘I always thought this pitch would suit us’. His team doubled down on that impres­sion in the semi-final, with Kobe McDon­ald, Dar­ragh Beirne and Ryan O’Donoghue rel­ish­ing in the space afforded to them — albeit by a mis­matched Louth defence.

Jason Rab­bitte never had a day in his short career like the one he enjoyed in the semi-final against Cork, and it would be per­verse if a man­ager didn’t emphas­ise that pos­it­ive exper­i­ence pre­par­ing play­ers for the decider.

But the brass-tacks truth for both the Gal­way hurl­ers and the Mayo foot­ballers is this: neither side will have encountered an oppon­ent like the one wait­ing for them on the big day.

Moran has a week longer to try and find vul­ner­able points in a Kerry team that looks for­bid­dingly strong from front to back. For Micheál Donoghue, the hard work is done now, and Gal­way’s pre­par­a­tions are taper­ing to Sunday.

There they will find the awe­some force in mod­ern hurl­ing, a Lim­er­ick side already assured of great­ness, but who have looked hungry to win one more All-Ire­land as age creeps all around them. Gal­way are at the other end of the scale.

They have lots of time on their side, so much that one won­ders if this has come a sea­son too soon? And the counter to that is the wis­dom that all the most suc­cess­ful counties under­stand: the best All-Ire­land to win is this one.