Mayo determined to make up for last season’s upset by Roscommon

HE doesn’t spend much time thinking about the past but Kevin McStay will ask his players to recall one moment from last season before they run out to take on Roscommon on Sunday.

He will ask them to remember the moments following last season’s championship defeat in Castlebar and channel it in a positive and pro-active manner.

“It’s very hard to say anything of note in a beaten dressing room, but I always make a note of saying ‘Remember how you feel right now. Remember the low we’re at now.’ All our dreams were shattered that day in Castlebar. We weren’t going to be winning the Connacht Championship and we had five or six weeks of nothingness stretching out in front.

“We bottled that feeling and kept it for the next time. The national league game in Castlebar was ‘the next time’ and now the challenge is to do it again,” he told the media at the recent launch of the Connacht Championship in Bekan.

The Ballina man is excited about the challenges to come and believes his squad are in a good place.

“We feel we’re getting stronger. We know a lot more than we did this time last year. The panel is settled. The team will settle as we play a minimum five or six championship games this summer. We’re in good shape. We ranked fourth in the league and if things were a little different in Tralee and Omagh we’d have picked up more points, so we know the potential we had in the league and where it could have brought us if we had given it our full attention.

“We have a very good sense that we’re ready to play in the ‘24 championship, so it’s up to us now to drive it on and see can we get the consistency we have to have, otherwise it won’t happen for us. We’re very confident we’re going in the right direction and at a good pace too.”