'I haven't been as disappointed after a game in a long time' – McHale

MAYO manager, Liam McHale might be introducing a lot of new faces to the inter-county scene and dramatically changing the age-profile of the team, but he still has high hopes, therefore Sunday's narrow defeat hit hard.

Speaking to The Mayo News, he said, “I’m very disappointed. If we showed a bit of composure in the last ten minutes, we should’ve won that game by four or five points. The work rate was there, the attitude was there but we had no composure. We were pressing them, getting the steals that we wanted, and then just kicking the ball away.

"We needed a little bit of composure. Make an extra pass and get the really high-percentage shots. So I'm very disappointed. They are the best team in the country at the moment, but we should’ve beaten them, comfortably.We just showed a bit of inexperience there in the last ten minutes, and it really hurt us. That's the way it is. I haven’t been as disappointed after a game in a long time.

”Despite the bitterly disappointing result, Mayo do still have one more league game, in which they can gain experience, and straighten out any other details".

McHale said “We were hoping to get a result today, to get a point or a victory and then we’d be able to make some adjustments and change the team selection but I don’t know now if that's going to be the case. “It’s been a very good league campaign overall, so it’s just a big disappointment that we didn’t win this game today, especially after having such a poor first half. But if we can sort that out, and show a little bit more composure in front of goal, and be patient, we’ll be much better for it for sure.”

McHale remained hopeful that the upcoming championship can be a good one for his side. “Our aim for the year was to stay in Division One. I think that's very important because the standard is very high. We also want to put ourselves in a position like that today, where one learns that with a bit of composure we can play anyone in the summertime, in the Championship, in a one-off game and beat them. We still haven’t lost that ambition but I'm just very disappointed that we didn’t get the win today.”