Baptism of fire for Mayo manager

A Baptism of fire


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Mike Finnerty

PICTURE the scene. It’s barely an hour after the Mayo footballers have just avoided becoming a pub quiz question for years to come, and the party is just getting started at the Emerald Grounds in Ruislip.
Players from both teams are sitting in a giant marquee having their post-match meal of beef or chicken, and Eddie Cochrane’s ‘C’mon everybody’ is blaring from the speakers next door.
It’s probably the last place in the world that James Horan wants to be at that very moment; especially with a few thousand disappointed/frustrated/angry Mayo supporters discussing the finer points of the day outside the tent.
As championship debuts go, the rookie Mayo manager couldn’t have asked for a tougher baptism of fire. His team shot 18 wides, missed a penalty, and were two points down with only minutes left against a team whose only win this season came against Kilkenny.
“We have a long way to go,” he conceded. “The players were at a low ebb last year. .
“This is what we signed up for. We knew there were going to be good days and bad days. It’s a curve, and the main thing is that it keeps coming up.
“In Ballintubber we had a lot of bad days before we had good days. You just have to stay with it, trust the people that are with you, trust what you’re doing. Hopefully, people will stay with us and keep supporting us.
“It was important to get a championship win today,” he continued. “Mayo were beaten by a Division 4 team in championship last year and maybe there was a bit of residue from that.
“Wins always breed confidence and hopefully we can kick on from here.”
The process of getting ready for Galway will begin again this week. Truth be told, there are plenty of issues for James Horan and his backroom team to address.
“Against the breeze in the first half we had twenty scoring chances, twenty shots on goal, and we got four of them,” he explained.
“We missed a penalty in that and there was some very poor shot selection. That’s always an obvious thing to work on.
“In the middle of the field we didn’t win enough breaking ball, we didn’t win enough primary possession. That gave them a platform and they used it very well.
“We didn’t take our opportunities in the first half, that left London in the game, and they took every opportunity that came their way.
“We got a huge scare, but you look at it in a number of different ways. We came over to win the game and we won the game.
“How we won it wasn’t ideal, let’s put it like that, but we have four weeks until we play Galway. Let’s see what we can do there.”
Time will tell whether this performance will help to make or break Mayo’s championship season.
The manager is probably as unsure as the rest of us, but with the memories of this reprieve still fresh, he focussed on the positive as his players got stuck into their dinners in the background.
“I think the only time we played well was in extra-time,” said Horan. “We went four points up against the wind but got caught with a sucker-punch goal. That kept London in the game and gave them confidence. But we eventually got there.
“Hopefully, it’s something we can kick on from.
“Our backs were to the wall, the crowd were getting rowdy, everything was going against us, we were two points down with a couple of minutes to go, in Ruislip. The momentum was with London.
“But we hung in there. We talked about it before extra-time, did well in extra-time, and we live to fight another day.”