The biting cold of the tunnel under the stand in McHale Park was the venue for James Horan's latest debriefing with the press pack following Mayo's sixth game in this years national league. In a freezing cold wind that wouldn't be out of place at the start of the FBD League, things were kept short and to the point. Asked about his initial thoughts on the game the Ballintubber man said, “We showed a lot of character and hard work and honest endeavor today, so I'm delighted with that. We made hard enough work of it from a scoring point of view. We turned over a huge amount of their ball, we won a huge number of turn overs today, so that's ultimately what won it for us today. I'm delighted with the two points and we can look forward now.”
Mayo ran up another double digit total of wides over the seventy minutes and that's something that he knows has to be improved on. “We should have won it by a lot more, but we didn't and we lacked maybe a bit of confidence and panicking on the shot. But we kept going and kept plugging away so that's far more rewarding and beneficial for the team, we got the two points and we're delighted. In all the games we've played, we've played a lot of good football at times, but we've been way to inconsistent for division one football. We kept it going today and that was our first aim.”
Mayo also managed to grab themselves a goal from a forward for the first time in a long time. But it was only a matter of time before it happened Horan said, “It's the first goal by a forward this year I think, but we've been creating some chances of late, so it was only a matter of time before one or two of them go in.”
Where to play Aidan O'Shea has become a water cooler topic around the county, with the big Breaffy man posted at centre half forward again on Sunday. James was happy with Aidan's overall play and that of the midfield duo he selected behind him. “Aidan played very well today, he's a very, very smart player and he did very well. He covered a lot defensively, and he got's got some streaking power going forward as well. Look at it, Barry and Seamie were excellent in the middle of the field as well, so that's working for us.”
With Cork left in the league in a fortnights time it's all about picking the win up there and not looking past it for Horan. “It's the same as it was before, it's a game we've got to go down and win. You wan't competitive games and you want as many competitive games as you can. If you can get to the semi-finals all the better, but if not it's not the end of the world either.”
With Congress passing the 'black card' motion yesterday, the Mayo manager was asked his view on the the decision and how it thought it would effect the game. “I don't know if it will bed in that seamlessly. It's hard to know how it will work. I know if you looked at last nights game, I saw on Twitter that there would have been 12 or 14 black cards out there. I'm not sure of the full rules but it will be interesting to see. I think the refs have a difficult job, I think there's a lot of inconsistency in referring and this might add to the confusion. If it improves the game, we've no choice to go with it at this stage and lets see what it does.”
