James Nallen hopes Mayo's experience will prove to be a telling factor in Sunday's All-Ireland semi-final.

Having contested the last two All-Ireland finals, the Connacht champions find themselves in the unusual position of having more recent big-match experience than Kerry and former Mayo stalwart Nallen reckons this just might prove decisive:

"I don't doubt that this current group has the potential, I really don't doubt that," he notes in The Irish Independent. "Every day it's about performance. The challenge is for the team to play as well as it can and that individually each player maximises his potential.

"Sunday can go either way. With their experience over the last couple of years you'd think Mayo are the more established side. This group has been on the road since 2011.

"Kerry have transitioned during that phase, so if experience and maturity count for anything you'd say Mayo should edge it. But if you go back to 1996 you see that youth can just come along and blow the whole thing open.

"We met in the semi-final in 2011 and Kerry won that comprehensively in the end, but this Mayo team was only starting up that year and finding their feet. This is definitely a more mature squad of players and you'd expect and hope that the last two seasons have toughened them."

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