Barry Moran has been in this position, too many times than he'd care to remember. But the big Castlebar man still took the time to pick over what had happened after another All Ireland final defeat in Croke Park on Monday evening. "We're bitterly disappointed. Going in at half-time we were in a good position. We felt that we could have pushed on and we had a great opportunity to win the game. We didn't. It was Vincent's who pushed on and in the end they were the better team and deservedly champions.”
Vincent's third goal just after Castlebar had grabbed their own first goal was the turning point in the contest according to Moran. “Straight after that they came down and got a goal which put them two back up and from there they got a purple patch and opened up a gap on us. We tried to pull it back and we got a goal ourselves but we could just never get back the gap that they opened up after they got the goal. That was the turning point. We were pushing on and pushing on and trying to narrow the gap and we got caught quite a lot of times on the counter attack and they got vital scores.”
As for the black card picked up by Richie Feeney early on, Moran didn't see the incident but was proud by the way that his side reacted to it and didn't let it rattle them. "To be honest I didn't see it because I was running after my man and a free was given and I turned around and saw him talking to Richie and to be honest with you I couldn't really believe that the black card went out. I know I didn't see it or anything, maybe ye can tell me exactly what happened but I don't think it was malicious and I cannot see how it was cynical 21 yards out from their goal but that's the way it went. I was talking with Richie inside, he's bitterly disappointed, an All-Ireland Final and he gets five minutes on the pitch due to a black card but in saying that that wasn't the winning and the losing of the game and we've no sour grapes, Vincent's were the better side on the day. We reacted positively and got a stranglehold on the game but if you look at our games over the whole championship whether in Connacht or against Crokes we've had mishaps, we'd sendings off, we'd injuries so I suppose we're used to it and we pushed on from there but the bitterly disappointing thing is the second half, that we never pushed on from there and that's the big regret, that we're going to have. It's fairly raw at the minute but we're going to have to sit down and look at it, look at the second half in particular and have a look at how they caught us on the counter attack and a look at how they opened us up. It's something that is going to haunt us but you learn from your mistakes and that's what we'll aim to do.”
As for the year overall, there's not many who would be predicting them to be in Croke Park this day last year said Moran. "Twelve months ago before we won a county would anyone have said we'd be here on Paddy's Day, I don't think so. Would there be many in the Mitchels? Deep down I don't think there'd be many. We know ourselves we are capable of pushing on. It is going to be raw, it is raw, no doubt it is going to take a while but we'll put our heads down and from there we'll regroup and it's early to be talking about it but we won't find it until the Mayo championship comes around in two or three months time.
