MAYO supporters leaving Croke Park on Sunday were not happy. The performance had been poor and the result had been decided long before the end.

In truth, if Kerry’s shooting had been better the gap between the teams would have been much greater.

However, if we look at the league campaign as a whole, the campaign was a positive one. Mayo stayed up in the division and that was the primary objective.

READ: Five players who caught our eye during Mayo’s league final defeat to Kerry

The final was a bit of a damp squib, but, to be honest, winning the league is almost irrelevant because how is a competition important when the week before, you have teams actively trying not to find themselves in the final.

FINDING FORM

WHEN you look at the league as a whole, it’s been a positive for Mayo. You’ve seen players come into form. Ryan O’Donoghue didn’t play his best on Sunday, but he has been sharp in the past few weeks.

Aidan O’Shea had a great first half in Croke Park and has had a good league. Mattie Ruane didn’t have a great game on Sunday but had a very good league campaign.

There’s a bunch of other players that have improved as the campaign went on - Jack Carney, Jordan Flynn, Enda Hession. 

If you’d told me that this would be the outcome of Mayo’s league campaign at the start, I would have bitten your hand off because I saw Mayo go into a league campaign quite weak without a lot of their key players early on and into a very competitive division. 

Similarly, we also have to look at next Sunday’s Connacht Championship match with Sligo very positively. There will be tired legs but Mayo have shown us enough in the last four or five weeks that they should be well good enough to go out and be the stronger team against Sligo.

MISSING SUPPORT

LET’S be brutally honest about it. At the start of the season the league final was not what Mayo were intending on winning - all their focus was on a Connacht title.

It’s the priority for them and it has been the priority for the last number of weeks. So that would be the message for me. Looking ahead to next week, there has to be a number of changes to the team. Kevin McStay played very few forwards against Kerry.

Eoghan McLaughlin was named as a forward. Conor Reid was there as well. He looks like a hard worker and a good link man, but he doesn’t look like the sort of player that’s going to attack the posts.

Not having natural forwards in the team puts even more pressure on Ryan O’Donoghue and he was well-marshalled on Sunday, particularly in the first half.

Throw in the fact that Mayo didn’t get enough scores out of Ruane, Carney or Flynn, and the problems become apparent.

The selection of too many defenders in the starting 15 works against the creation of opportunities for the likes of Ryan O’Donoghue and Aidan O’Shea and the scores dry up.

KICK-OUT STRATEGY

I DON’T know what our kick-out strategy is. I’m watching it all through the league and I still don’t know. It looks like we want to try and isolate people and space towards the sidelines. Then you’re running the risk of kicking the ball over the sideline, which we did.

There was a couple of times when there were shorter kick-outs towards the sideline as well and Mayo players found themselves facing three opponents. That just can’t happen. The Kerry goal came from a kick-out that should never have happened. Even if the Mayo player won the ball there were three Kerry men around him. It was poor..

I don’t know what our strategy is on long kick-outs either. It just doesn’t seem like we have an idea of what we’re going to do which is a big negative for later in the year.

As the championship hots up, the opportunity for short kick-outs, particularly in early stages in the games, will be reduced because teams will be more aggressively pressing the kick-out.

Therefore Mayo have to have a long kick-out plan in place. On Sunday, Mayo were totally cleaned out in the middle, apart from the first 10 or 12 minutes.

Kerry were totally dominant in any of the kick-outs that had to go long up the field. They were much better on breaks and much better in the air. 

KERRY’S KICK-PASSES

WE’RE also not kicking the ball enough. Kerry have probably kicked the ball through the middle third more than any other team this season.

Their half backs and midfielders are likely to try and kick it to a half forward, and then that receiver is going to turn and put a diagonal ball in front of David Clifford.

They’re much more likely to have a period of play where they have two kick-passes in a row. I can’t remember the last time I saw Mayo have two kick-passes in a row.

It seems Mayo are either unwilling or unable to do so. Maybe they’re being coached not to do it, but they’re just not doing it.

We’ve played two games in Croke Park this year and Mayo have gone long periods of those where they’ve struggled to score from play.

That’s a direct correlation to the fact that they don’t kick the ball. You can’t be successful in Croke Park under these new rules without being able to move the ball quickly with the boot.

So we need to have a good long hard think about ourselves and maybe we need to think about this long-term. If these rules are going to persist for a number of years we aren’t going to be challenging for any titles unless we find players that can kick the ball quickly and accurately - allow the players we have to do it.

Those are the two main negatives for me from Sunday, and they’ve been the negatives throughout the league campaign. There doesn’t seem to be a kick-out strategy and I don’t think Mayo have the willingness or the ability to kick the ball through the middle third.

READ: Door remains open for Conor Loftus to return to Mayo team