@mfalkvidd , I see. That makes sense, thanks.

I've been busy the last day or so..:male-technologist: and I've now got the radios communicating! :)

i've used the pin config given by adafruit:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather-m0-radio-with-lora-radio-module/pinouts

i've read about timeouts for these lora boards, so i've upped the values in the both sketches.
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/8813/any-success-story-on-lora-rfm95-module-and-mysensors

#define RFM95_RETRY_TIMEOUT_MS  (5000ul) 
#define MY_TRANSPORT_STATE_TIMEOUT_MS (20*1000ul)
#define   MY_RFM95_TX_TIMEOUT_MS (10000ul)

I spaced the radios about a 1m apart and they now communicate :) i'm not sure if distance helped.
Also with the above timeouts they aren't needed at such a short distance.