Durcan left disappointed as Mayo lose to Monaghan

MOVING ON Mayo’s Paddy Durcan says the team must ‘push on’ against Kerry next Saturday night. Pic: Sportsfile

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Daniel Carey

THERE’S a story told about a man who went to Dr Abernethy, complaining of hopeless melancholy, and was advised to go and see the famous clown, Grimaldi. “I am Grimaldi,” he said.
Having felt the heartbreak that comes with losing All-Ireland finals at club and county level, Paddy Durcan knows there are degrees of disappointment when it comes to football. Last Sunday doesn’t fit in the ‘utter devastation’ category. Still, Stephen Rochford has signalled that not staying in Divsion 1 of the National Football League would be a ‘huge disappointment’, and last weekend’s home defeat to Monaghan makes that task harder.
“We were looking to target the first game and we were looking to have two points,” Durcan told the written press afterwards. “Look, it just wasn’t good enough. We just didn’t perform ... We really targeted tonight but it just didn’t happen.”
The Castlebar Mitchels man acknowledged the ‘slow start’ Mayo made left them with ‘a battle’ on their hands, adding: “We can have no complaints, we didn’t deserve to win tonight ... We could have snuck it in the end but Monaghan were the better team.”
Durcan, who won a Mayo News/O’Neills Club Stars award for his role in helping Mitchels to back-to-back county titles, says he was ‘bitterly disappointed’ by the defeat. And he notes that Mayo now face a ‘massive challenge’ in Killarney next Saturday.
“We have to dust ourselves down now ... and we need to get two points down there,” he explained.
“After tomorrow we can’t be looking back at this, we’ve got to push on and get ready to go against Kerry ... It’s going to be a massive challenge again. You can’t be feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve got to get on with it.”
The 22-year-old acknowledged the physicality of last weekend’s game, and suggested that Mayo had at times played into Monaghan’s hands.
“We probably carried the ball into contact down the middle a lot,” he commented. “They [Monaghan] were getting men behind the ball ... stopping us up, giving frees and it was hard to move the ball on quick. But we were too lethargic bringing the ball [upfield]. We weren’t hitting the line hard enough I didn’t think, myself included, and it just wasn’t good enough. I’m not going to point any fingers, I wasn’t good enough tonight and as a team I don’t think we were good enough.”
The astronaut Chris Hadfield wrote in his memoir that his job was ‘an endless challenge, like a crossword puzzle that expands as fast as you can fill in’. Mayo players came away from MacHale Park on Saturday with much to ponder, but will find themselves right back on the horse next weekend. The squad was down quite a few bodies for Monaghan’s visit. With that in mind, where does Durcan feel they’re at overall?
“I thought we were in a good position,” he says. “Training went well coming into tonight but for whatever reason, which we’re going to have to analyse in the next day or two, that just wasn’t good enough. That’s not good enough for Mayo’s standards, I don’t think anyone is going to be happy with that. It’s just disappointing. It’s really, really disappointing.”