When Mayo were awarded a penalty in injury time on Wednesday night and were trailing by a point against Sligo, the percentage option was to take a point and see where the chips landed after that, but that thought never entered their heads said Mayo captain Andrew Farrell after the game. "Ah no, when you've a man like Darren Coen standing over a penalty like that you know he's going to rattle it into the net."
That penalty came just after Sligo had rattled home their own second goal to go into the lead, but there was no panic on the sideline or on the field, the Killala man said. "The lads on the sideline were telling us there's three minutes left and there's no point panicking and if we get a chance we've to be composed to kick it, if it was going to extra time so be it, or we were going to get a chance to win it, you have to be prepared. Whenever you're playing in a Mayo jersey you have to be prepared to have a bit of streetwise with you and get the results."
Mayo were on top for most of the game and looked to be easing home to the Connacht final, but a late rally from Sligo saw them almost steal it, and that was down to Mayo not playing as they had in the early stages of the game the captain believes. "We didn't leave it easy for ourselves, but any day you're going to face a Sligo side in championship action it's going to be a battle no more that it was last year in Ballina. Hopefully we'll have learned from that and move on to the Connacht final.
"We stopped doing what we were doing right in the first half and played into their arms, they started picking up all the soft ball that we were kicking in there [forward line] we stopped playing our running game which had paid dividends in the first half and simple as that, we changed tactics and it didn't work for us.
"We seem to prefer playing against the wind and play a running game, you saw in the first half we'd some great runs coming off the shoulder and in the second half we changed that and it didn't work for us. It's something to work on."
