Goals cost Mayo dearly, says Cillian O’Connor

Goals cost Mayo dearly

Cillian O’Connor spoke with maturity after the game

Edwin McGreal

THE scene outside the Mayo dressing-room under the Cusack Stand was an unfortunately familiar one. In the last three years the Mayo minors have had promising campaigns abruptly halted by northern opposition in heartbreaking circumstances.
Tyrone and Armagh inflicted defeats in the finals of ‘08 and ‘09 and Sunday’s loss to the Red Hand county at the penultimate stage rounded off the tale of woe.
As the players emerged from the dressing room their grim faces told a tale. For some it was a new experience. For the veterans of last year like Cillian O’Connor, Fergal Durkan, Danny Kirby, Darren Coen and Jack McDonnell, it was a familiar feeling, but none the easier for that.
“It’s hard to know what to say after losing like that,” admitted O’Connor, the Mayo captain, who was brave enough to step forward for a few words with the media.
“Coming up here and scoring sixteen points, probably dominating a lot of the game and then getting beat by those three goals . . . when you concede three goals you’re making life hard for yourself and you’re not going to win many games conceding three goals.
“I suppose at the vital stages they probably dominated,” he continued. “It’s hard to put into words how everyone is feeling in there [dressing room] right now.”
Mayo had produced a display in the second quarter, as good as any by a green and red team at Croke Park, hitting seven splendid unanswered points in twelve minutes before the short whistle.
“I can’t fault any of the lads, everybody was fantastic in the first half,” nodded the Ballintubber teenager. “The effort and the work-rate and everything in the first half was brilliant. It was hard to see where their (Tyrone) scores were going to come from. But we had a bit of a bad patch in the second half that cost us.”
While the Ulster champions eventually did justify their favourites tag, the game certainly didn’t run along expected lines.
“We were written off all week as massive underdogs and everyone was telling us how much Tyrone were going to beat us by and how great they were,” admitted O’Connor.
“But I think we showed . . . we dominated them and we were the better side for the first half and fifteen minutes of the second half. I think we can be proud of ourselves and proud of our efforts. We couldn’t have done any more to win the game, I think.”