After taking congratulations from family and friends on the field after his stunning performance for Mayo on Wednesday night, it was all about looking ahead to next Sunday for Mayo's man of the match Ryan O'Donoghue. The young Belmullet man was just delighted that the team got the win. "Thank God, it's been hard training and if you lose your first game you're out, so it's good to have it over and done with. It's all about the team, we're all in it together, I'm just glad that we got over the hurdle," he told the Mayo Advertiser.
Mayo hit top gear right at the start of the game hitting Leitrim for 2-1 in the opening five minutes and that was all part of the plan he told us. "The first five minutes we wanted to push on and get a few scores on the board and it was even better it was goals, we took the foot off the gas at the end of the first half but we're glad to have got it done."
Letting Leitrim back into the game in the second quarter is something they will want to try to avoid doing again when they face Galway on Sunday week in the Connacht final, and the Belmullet man knows that saying, "You always feel when a team gets up on you is this going to happen, but thankfully in the second half we went out and knew we'd a job to do and we finished it off" before adding, "We wouldn't like to let that happen the next day another team might not let us away with it."
O'Donoghue was full of praise for the panel as a whole saying" "Anyone on the bench there could have been starting, there's a serious challenge for places, but it's great and hopefully we can go on now and go places," and as for the man of the match award, "Happy to get the man-of-the-match, but it's all about the team."
If he can replicate his form from Wednesday night next time out against Galway it will be a major addition to Mayo's chances of making it Connacht minor title number 40 for the county.
