There is plenty of room for improvement for Mayo ahead of Saturday week's All Ireland senior final replay, is the word from the camp this week. Speaking on Tuesday evening Mayo's Keith Higgins said: "Maybe, you'd be looking sometimes at it a bit more critical, ourselves more than anything. But I still don't think we played well on Sunday to be honest with you. We kind of played alright in some patches [but] the performance wasn't as good as we expected it to be. It hasn't hit the heights we think it can hit, and so again it's probably even the Tipp game we played well for 20 minutes. It's about improving on the areas we let ourselves down on Sunday. There are a lot of areas to improve there, so that's the big focus to step up again for the next level of performance for me."
The Mayo defence put in a massive shift last Sunday against the much vaunted Dublin attakck, but there is still a lot for them to work on, the Ballyhaunis man said. "I remember looking up at the scoreboard and seeing 2-0 and thinking that's a bit strange alright, I thought we defended very well at that stage. Obviously when you break it down and look at the goals they got, we've to look into how did they get those chances and create the goal chances, they created another that David had to make a save from. While the goals were unfortunate they still created the chances and you have to kind of critique the situation and look at how they did it. It's a strange one when after 30 minutes they have no points and then you go in five minutes later and are five points behind. But with that type of game anything can happen.
"I thought defensively we played well enough, there was goal chances they created, they have to be an issue for us. I thought a few boys really stood up the last day and played well, some chances that Dublin didn't take. But I think both sides will be of the same mindset that they didn't preform overly well and have another shot at it now. We'll be looking at how we can improve."
His defensive partner Lee Keegan had similar feelings after the game. "We had a very good start to be honest," Keegan said. "I think in the first 10 or 15 minutes we seemed to hold them quite well. We had a lot of turnovers, I think we had 17 turnovers in the first half against them, so from that point of view defensively we did very well. We probably have to feel we coughed up some soft possession. I think we were dwelling on the ball a couple of times, some silly hand passes and kick passes which gave them incentive. The two goals were probably a bit of a disaster but they are what they were. We kicked on then after half time and put the foot down, but again Dublin got another purple patch. It just felt like sometimes maybe we weren’t going to get back into it, but the belief in the squad is just huge, so we are just delighted to get away with something today. I know it's not what we wanted or what Dublin wanted but it's something at the end of the day. We have to kick on big time now in the next 13 days and look forward to another cracking game."
When the full time whistle went it was a strange feeling, according to Higgins who said: "You don't know how to think, should you be disappointed you didn't win or relief to have another chance. It's a bit of a mixture really, and all that evening meeting the family and friends and don't know how to react. But its we've an awful lot here to work on and see what we can improve on and see it as a positive."
Keegan, when asked after the game was it a draw won or a draw lost, responded: "Neither, it is what it is. I suppose a lot of people hadn’t given us much chance coming into the game, we’ll take what it is. We learned a lot from today, probably two soft goals conceded. Maybe you could say they were unlucky but we’re just happy to get out with a draw. We were three points down with five minutes to go and showed great heart, but great heart doesn’t win it. We still have to go and do another 70 minutes. We’ll go away, review this game and go back to the drawing board next week, so there’s loads to work on. Dublin have loads to work on and I suppose conditions played a huge part today. It was very tough out there."
