Mayo hit ground running

Mayo hit ground running


Horan: “We’re a force to be reckoned with”

Mike Finnerty

MAYO manager James Horan believes his team will be ‘a force to be reckoned with’ if they can build on last Sunday’s record-breaking Connacht SFC quarter-final victory over Galway.
Speaking in the aftermath of the 17-points win at Pearse Stadium, Horan was also keen to pay tribute to the work-rate and tackling ability of his forwards who he said had ‘set up’ the success with their turn-overs in the first half.
“We were confident coming up, we were favourites, but we knew if we played like we could, we’d win,” the Mayo boss told The Mayo News.
“What set it up for us were the turnovers in the first half. Our forwards pinned them in and broke their spirit a little bit. “When Cathal Carolan got the [first] goal we knew we were in the ascendancy, and we drove on.
“We had to come up here, and we had to prepare well, with a lot of injured players,” he added. “We did our stuff. If we work like that, and can build on that, we’ll be a force to be reckoned with.”
Elsewhere, Alan Dillon, a late inclusion in the starting fifteen, said that Mayo’s players now believed that they “can compete with any team in the country”.
“It’s a win, but at the end of the day there’s no silverware in there,” said the Ballintubber veteran.
“The last few games in the National League brought us along in leaps and bounds too, but James [Horan] and the lads will have our feet back on the ground by Tuesday night.”
Meanwhile, Mayo’s odds on winning three Connacht Senior Football Championships in a row for the first time in more than sixty years have been slashed ahead of their semi-final meeting with Roscommon on Sunday, June 16 in Castlebar.
They are now the 2/9 favourites to retain the Nestor Cup.