A STRANGE old affair up by the Foyle. Mayo slunk out of the championship almost apologetically against a Derry side who, if we didn't know better, might class themselves as contenders from here on in. Certainly if the draw favours them from here, they have the look of a side who could contest an All Ireland semi-final. Who ever thought that a few weeks ago?

As for Mayo, this was as despondent an afternoon as even they could be expected to conjure up. Only a couple of lucky bounces of the ball had them still in matters at halftime and by the end of the evening, they were yet again exiting the championship to the sound of oles from opposing fans. All Ireland finals felt very far away last night.

It's hard to know where to start with them. The clearest thing is that nobody, least of all John O'Mahony, knows their best team. Of the 15 that began the All Ireland final last September, only seven started yesterday. More remarkable is the fact that of the defensive sextet that started the league final . . . just two games ago, after all . . . only Liam O'Malley survived. For now . . . and maybe for a while . . . O'Mahony's is a team in flux.

And boy did it show early on. For the first 10 minutes, they made Derry look like All Ireland contenders. O'Malley was a step behind Paddy Bradley for every ball and David Kilcullen was wandering around the general area of centre-back like a tourist lost in a big city. With Fergal Doherty in charge at midfield and Derry's wing-backs breaking forward at every opportunity, Mayo were in danger of losing all grip on the game before it properly got started.

Derry needed to kill them off there and then and to be fair to them, they made a decent fist of doing so. They strung together a lovely early necklace of points, all from play. Conleth Gilligan, Barry McGoldrick and midfielder James Conway all had points on the board within the first seven minutes, each one at the end of a flowing passing move. When Bradley clipped over a free on 13 minutes from in front of the posts to put Derry 0-4 to 0-0 up, it was clear that all that was needed was a goal for the home side and we could all go home.

Unbelievably though, the goal came at the other end. In what was Mayo's first real foray into the Derry half, a long David Heaney ball flew high over the heads of Barry Moran and his marker Kevin McCloy right onto the chest of Barry Gillis in the Derry goal. The couple of earlygame showers that had swept across Celtic Park claimed their forfeit, however, and the ball slipped out of Gillis's grasp and gifted Moran with a flick into the bottom corner of the net. Straight from the kick-out, Mayo drew a free that Conor Mortimer dispatched and, without playing any football at all, Mayo were level. Funny old game and all that.

Derry still outscored Mayo by four points to two over the rest of the half and went to their tea two up, but they must have gone in feeling not unlike the folk who put their 550 Barbara Streisand tickets on Ebay during the week only to have to sell them for 150. A two-point lead was the height of deception.

And within four minutes of the restart, they had paid for not putting Mayo away.

Points from Aidan Kilcoyne . . .

with his first touch after coming on as a half-time sub for the anonymous Alan Dillon . . .and centre-forward Pierce Hanley drew Mayo level again.

And for the next 10 minutes, O'Mahony's side found themselves well on top and had more than enough chances to build up a lead to take into the final quarter.

But what did they do? They kicked wides, six of them within minutes of each other, each one taking air out of the Mayo crowd like a slow puncture. Derry, though they were taking on water, were far from sunk.

And it all turned around on 48 minutes when they got their first goal. A high crossed ball from Bradley landed on top of midfielder James Conway in the Mayo full-back line and his flick provided a 50-50 ball between goalkeeper James Clarke and Derry corner-forward Colin Devlin.

Devlin was the smallest, slightest man on the field, Clarke among the biggest and broadest, but it was the Derryman who made it there first to send Derry 1-8 to 1-5 up.

From there, Derry pretty much freewheeled home.

Bradley tapped over four of the next six points as Mayo threw their hat at it and the beating became a trimming when Enda Muldoon found himself in hectares of space five minutes from time and from 20 yards out, lobbed Clarke beautifully.

DERRY B Gillis; M McGoldrick, K McCloy, G O'Kane; L Hinphey, SM Lockhart, F McEldowney; F Doherty, J Conway (0-1); B McGoldrick (0-1), P Murphy, E Muldoon (1-1); C Devlin (1-1), Paddy Bradley (0-5, 0-2 frees), C Gilligan (0-3, 0-2 frees) Subs M Lynch for B McGoldrick, 29 mins; R Wilkinson (0-1) for Murphy, 57 mins; Patsy Bradley for Conway, 60 mins; P O'Hea for Hinphey, 67 mins; G Donaghy for Gilligan, 69 mins

MAYO D Clarke; T Cunniffe, L O'Malley, T Howley; D Heaney, D Kilcullen, T Mortimer; P Harte, D Brady; BJ Padden, P Hanley (0-1), A Dillon; C Mortimer (0-1, free), B Moran (1-2), A Moran (0-1) Subs A Kilcoyne (0-1) for Dillon, h-t; A Campbell for Kilcoyne, 43 mins; K O'Neill for Padden, 50 mins; C McDonald for Campbell, 60 mins; R McGarrity for Brady, 63 mins Referee D Coldrick (Meath)