Mayo got their All Ireland Senior Football Championship off to a winning start on Saturday last with a hard fought win over Cavan in Sligo.
This weekend they will be on the road again when they take on Monaghan in the second round of group games, looking to put a foot firmly in the quarter-finals of the competition, before they wrap up the group stages with a clash against Armagh.
Speaking after their win over Cavan last Saturday, Mayo manager Michael Moyles was very pleased with how his side preformed saying: "Very pleased, we were 11 players down, but to saying that the likes of Tara and Ciara Needham when they came in Saoirse Lally had a superb game, you can see they young players kind of carry the mantle there and soaked up a lot of the pressure and did the right things.
"We have some very good intelligent young players coming through and that is a credit to clubs and underage system in Mayo. It is great for us."
Mayo learned a lot from their league campaign in terms of how to play the game, the Crossmolina native added.
"At the very start of the league we had that where we were butting our head into and were getting turned over and caught on the breaks and leaking a lot of goals.
"I suppose division one football taught us that sometimes we have to have a bit of patience, sometimes our game management could have been a bit better and I felt, we felt that if we went into Cavan and got turned over and left all that space behind it was going to cause havoc.
"Cavan are a very good side, look at what they did in division two, they scored goals and lots of them, we didn't concede a goal today and that is the first time not doing that in the league and that is pales and we were hoping we didn't pick up a yellow card, I don't know there is anything Orla (Conlon ) could have done to avoid it. I thought we managed the game fairly well, you can see the girls are exhausted the worked their socks off."
Mayo are in the only four-team group in the championship and that will be a benefit to them in getting more game time into players.
"It is that sort of year, we are lucky we have a very good panel, you can see we there are 15 girls working over there working. They are very disappointed they didn't get game time, they are not resting on their laurels and working very hard, it could be four or five extra girls playing next week against Monaghan. We have very good competition for places, with the girls coming back all the time and that is just good for Mayo football."
As for getting those who are injured back in the fray for later on in the Summer Moyles is hopeful that by the time the Armagh game comes around, he will have a a full deck to pick from. "We've a few long term coming back, over the next three weeks we hope to have a full squad back, they are working very hard. We have very good medical team and we are blessed in that regard. We'd be hoping by Armagh we'll be back to full strength," he concluded.
