THE MAIN MAN Mayo’s Tom Parsons scored his first goal for the county team in seven years last Sunday. Pic: Sportsfile
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Edwin McGreal
AS Tom Parsons walked away from his TG4 interview last Sunday having picked up the man of the match award, his proud mother Carmel came over and hugged Mayo’s goalscoring hero.
The big Mayo number 8 duly handed her the crystal to Carmel’s great excitement.
“Oh, the best ever Mother’s Day present,” she exclaimed.
Tom, as is the wont of footballers these days, is more circumspect with his emotions.
“We’ll be happy we got the win,” he told The Mayo News.
“We’ve loads to improve on. Did we play great football throughout the 70 minutes? No.
“Did we show heart and determination? Yeah, and I’m glad we did show that, but we’ve got a huge task now next Sunday, we’ll need to get a result next Sunday. It [beating Tyrone] doesn’t change anything for us. We’ll be getting our focus switched immediately.”
But after the defeats to Cavan and Dublin – and particularly the nature of them – was the Charlestown midfielder worried about where Mayo were at? He’s quick to point out that this team have had experience of so many dark nights of the soul not to get overly worried about league form in March.
“Adversity is the name of the game sometimes and we know all about that,” he admitted.
“When things go wrong, you have to bounce back, and in the league you don’t have time to moan about these losses, because you have to get back up on the horse and go again. And it’s great in one sense that we have these games coming along so we can park games but, you know, we’ve an awful to work on.”
Parsons had a big influence on the game with 30 possessions. His goal was vital and he had two assists in the first half as well. Two turnovers in the second half deep in Mayo territory were crucial too, while he superbly fielded one of only two kick-outs to go long in the entire game.
The goal was his first for Mayo since hitting the net against Kerry in the 2010 league.
“I suppose I don’t get into too many [goalscoring] opportunities, but it’s nice on days like this when you get the opportunity that you take it because, often against these northern teams, specifically Tyrone, how valuable a point was, there were very little scores in the last ten or 15 minutes.”
Donegal come to Castlebar next weekend and, while any result in Omagh kept Mayo’s fate in their own hands, they need something from Sunday’s game to assure themselves of safety.
“We’re under no illusions that Donegal beat Tyrone well. We won’t be high-fiving or anything today. We’ll be back to the drawing board, we’ll be looking at Donegal, looking at where we can improve and we’ll need an improvement next Sunday.”
