Rochford rallies the troops

SUITS YOU Mayo manager Stephen Rochford, an AIB employee, is pictured at AIB’s announcement of the 5-year extension of their GAA sponsorship which includes the GAA All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, AIB Club Championships and the AIB Camogie Club Championships. Pic: Sportsfile

Mike Finnerty

MAYO manager Stephen Rochford says that his players’ ‘confidence was rattled’ by the recent Connacht SFC semi-final defeat to Galway, but believes that ‘the glass is still very much half-full’ as they prepare to begin another All-Ireland Qualifier adventure.
Speaking at an AIB press event in Dublin yesterday (Monday) morning, Rochford described the task of taking on Limerick on Saturday week next as ‘a tricky affair’ and said that ‘there was no such thing as a gimme’ in championship football.
“Our experience in our first Qualifier game in the past [2016 and 2017] has always been that it’s really really tricky and difficult,” said the AIB’s Head of Homes in Mayo.
“They were at home, this one is going to be on the road.
“Limerick have had well-documented difficulties, but they’ve got a great GAA man over them in Billy Lee, and I have no doubt that they’re looking to move on and get something out of their season. It will be a tricky affair.
“We had a game there in Limerick last year against Cork, so we have some familiarity with it, so we look forward to it. But knowing that, contrary to maybe national opinion, that there’s no such thing as a gimme with these games.
“They’re tricky affairs, and both teams are starting from the same point having been knocked out of the provincial championship.
“My experience is that you’ve got teams who are low on confidence” he added.
“You finish your National League and all focus turns to the championship. In some cases it may have been on that for a couple of weeks or a month previous, so you invest a lot into that first championship game.
“All of a sudden you come out second best, so confidence is obviously not at the level it was in your provincial championship and you have to pick up from there.
“What the backdoor can then help do, and it’s a bit of a cliché, is help you to build up momentum. It does allow you to get confidence back and that’s where the flip-side of the coin is and what we’re hoping to achieve.”
Mayo returned to training just three days after losing to Galway, and had their first challenge match since exiting the provincial championship last Tuesday evening against Sligo.
Rochford has also had time to reflect on the Galway defeat, and analyse the data and footage. He feels there were some positives to be taken from Mayo’s performance.
“Certainly, confidence would have been rattled, it was our focus to win that game and push into a Connacht semi-final but that didn’t materialise” he explained.
“But there are a number of positives for us to take — against a team that had a great formline going into that game, similar to Dublin, that we went toe-to-toe with them, with 14 men for two-thirds of that game.
“And we got hit with a goal in the 74th minute, which was a sucker-punch but a really good goal. On another day we would have been coming out on the right side of that, but unfortunately we didn’t execute in front of goal as well as we would have liked.
“We didn’t play quite as well as we’d have hoped, I wouldn’t have been maybe as scathing as maybe others were in relation to our performance, but it wasn’t at the levels that we would have liked.
“But I don’t think that’s very surprising very early in May, and we know we can get better. “But we need to be in the championship for as long as possible to get the very best out of us.
“We could have still have won that game, and on the standards that we set for ourselves, we’d said that we still should have won it” he continued. “And that’s no disrespect to Galway, but in that sense the glass is still very much half full.”

AIB Sponsorship
FOOTBALLERS Eoghan Kerin (Annaghdown and Galway), James McCarthy (Ballymun Kickhams and Dublin), James O’Donoghue (Killarney Legion and Kerry), Colm Cooper (Dr Crokes and formerly Kerry) and Stephen Rochford (formerly Crossmolina Deel Rovers, current Mayo manager), all AIB employees, were in Dublin yesterday (Monday) as AIB announced a five-year extension to their 27-year GAA sponsorship.