‘We’ll be back’ says Gardiner after Mayo U-20s finish bottom of Connacht championship group

‘WE’LL be back’.

Arnold Swarzenegger said it slightly better (and differently) but there was still no escaping Peadar Gardiner’s enthusiasm for the future of Mayo football.

On a night when youth, inexperience and a lack of cohesion let them down, the Mayo U-20 manager insisted there was ‘no stone left unturned’ in preparing this team for their four-game Connacht campaign.

The loss to Sligo could not be viewed outside of the context of a campaign that was stop-start-stutter on a macro and micro level.

The parallels between this game, the loss to Leitrim and the draw against Roscommon could not have been more glaring.

“It’s a tough question and at this stage we need to reflect on it. It’s such a busy season, it’s such a busy six weeks. It’s just going game to game. Definitely to find that consistency and that’s what we’re striving for and that’s what we’re training hard for,” the Crossmolina man said afterwards.

“We met our match tonight, 100 percent. Sligo were by far the better team, they deserved victory, very well-conditioned, strong runners. They’ve won two Connacht championships. So we need to improve, that’s the bottom line from us and that’s what we’ll try and do.

“I suppose Sligo came out of the traps, they got a run on us and when a team gets a run on you it can be very difficult. We just couldn’t get out of our half. We seemed to bring the ball into the tackle a lot. We had one or two goal chances, if we could take one of them it might have been somewhat different possibly.”

Despite being unable to convert two Connacht title-winning Minor teams into one U-20 Connacht final appearance - elongating a wait for a U-20 title that goes back to 2018 - Gardiner maintained that the right structures are in place to attain future success at this grade.

Colm Boyle’s U-19 development team, David Heaney and Tom Reilly’s U-17s, the Mayo secondary schools and former Mayo Minor Sean Deane all got a mention as Gardiner made the case for brighter days ahead for the Mayo U-20s.

“We’re on the right road and you may not have seen it tonight but it’s a long road,” he began.

“And hopefully if we start winning titles at underage, and obviously we’ve won it at Minor level over the last few years. Sean’s [Deane] team have one two Connacht championships so that’s a great boost for U-20 level in the next few years.

“I can guarantee you, we’ll be back next year and these lads will be back on the horse in the next few weeks with their clubs. Some of them might go onto the Mayo senior squad. And we will be back. That is the message from us.”