Six teenagers - Patrick O’Malley, Brian O’Malley, Paul Lambert, Oisín McLaughlin, Colm Moran and Rory Brickenden - from the West Mayo town are part of the county U20 football squad that face Kildare in the inaugural All-Ireland championship final at that grade.

These are magical times for football in the picturesque beauty spot.

Less than 18 months ago Westport were crowned All-Ireland intermediate club football champions on Jones’ Road.

Then, a few weeks before Christmas, Westport won their first County U21 A championship title.

Back in April, Rice College, Westport contested a Hogan Cup final for the first time and were desperately unlucky to lose to St Ronan’s College, Lurgan by a point at Croke Park.

Meanwhile, the Westport club’s senior team, coached by former Mayo manager James Horan and backboned by former Football of the Year, Lee Keegan, are making great strides too.

But it wasn’t always like this in a town where the local soccer, athletics and rugby clubs are also vibrant and successful competitors for hearts, minds and talented youngsters.

Westport GAA club chairman, Charlie Lambert, whose son Paul lines out with Mayo tomorrow, has been a central figure in the renaissance.

“It’s so common now to see young boys and girls around Westport wearing the club tops and jerseys, but that wasn’t always the case,” he explains.

“It’s less than 10 years since Westport weren’t able to field a minor team. So much hard work has gone in since then, and a lot of people have shown a lot of foresight and vision to put a really good underage structure in place.

“It’s hard to put an exact date on when things started to turn, but doing our club plan five or six years ago was certainly very important.

“We appointed a Coaching and Games committee to oversee all of our underage development, and to get a structure in place for it.

We also identified good coaches and volunteers and we have 60 coaches now working with underage teams. We prioritised the development of skills. But we’re not bringing players through from U12 to specifically win county championships, the big picture is to bring players through for our senior team down the line.

Four-time All-Star defender, Keegan, was part of that Westport team that won an All-Ireland club IFC title in 2017.

He is the first to admit that his commitment to his local club is a fairly recent phenomenon.

“I’m not going to say I’m a complete club man” the Mayo star said last year. “I love my club, and I love my friends in the club.

"But it took me a long time to get to that point. I had to learn to respect my club. I know that sounds awful, but that’s the way it was.

"I couldn’t understand the whole idea of the club being so important to people when I was in school. The whole idea of ‘one life, one club’.

"I just didn’t get that. But we had a good group in 2009 and I remember that was the first time I really felt a sense of togetherness and camaraderie with a club team. We did everything together.

“That was when I started to realise what ‘club’ meant to people. The craic we had that year too, I’ll never forget it. This current group is like that too, we are inseparable.”

The same goes for the six Westport friends and team-mates who line out with Mayo tomorrow.

They have come through the underage ranks and school teams together, and are the poster boys for their club’s recent resurgence.

“I’m proud as a parent and I’m proud of the club,” admits Lambert.

“To see where they’ve come from, and to see them represent Mayo in an All-Ireland final, gives me great pride.”