‘I’m really proud of the players’ – Gardiner

Peadar Gardiner could afford to be optimistic after his first game as Mayo U-20 manager.

He had just watched his side let a seven-point lead slip against a team that had only two genuinely threatening forwards.
Instead of facing down the barrel of extra-time or bemoaning an embarrassing championship exit, the Crossmolina man was already looking forward to next week’s meeting with Galway in Hastings Insurance MacHale Park.

“I’m really proud of the players. It was a real championship game there tonight,” Gardiner began, when asked to sum up his initial thoughts.

“We had a six- or seven-point lead at times. We knew Roscommon would come back; they are a good team. Playing in the Hyde is very difficult and then at the very end it could have went any way.”

Pushed on why they failed to score after the forty-fourth minute, he admitted that their barren final quarter was cause for concern.

“Roscommon came at us, they had nothing to lose and we kind of sat back. We were defending a lead which is obviously something we shouldn’t have done,” Gardiner said.

“It’s something we can work on, they are young lads and they battled really hard. We had 17-18-year-old lads playing on the pitch tonight, lads making their debut for Mayo. So again, really proud of them. We can definitely take some learnings from tonight.”

Some might look at a Mayo team that lets a seven-point lead slip from their grasp and scoff: ‘Same old Mayo’.
Gardiner did not agree.

“These are young lads developing. As I said, they are very young. Some of them made their debut for Mayo tonight. They are not concerned about any Mayo ways,” he said.

“This is our Mayo team and again [it was] a real battling performance. Roscommon are a very strong team, well coached, and we battled toe-to-toe with them. We move onto Galway now next week. That’s the focus.”
If there’s saving grace from Wednesday evening’s stalemate, it’s that Mayo will have three more goes at getting to a provincial final.

That leaves however-many-odd training sessions to work on the shortcomings shown against the Rossies.
Gardiner admitted that doing a ‘Stephen Gerrard’ on it is not something he wants to see over their next three games in Connacht.

“We probably needed to press a bit more and not sit back, which we did and there’s loads of things. We can learn. There was a lot of things we did right out there tonight,” he said.

“We had a real potent attacking team. Darragh Beirne, Darragh Reilly and Niall Hurley up front scored three goals tonight, so we did a lot of things right tonight and obviously there’s a lot of things we can improve on. It’s a short turnaround so we look forward to next Wednesday night.”