THE championship’s all-time leading scorer, Cillian O’Connor, might be doubtful for next Saturday’s All-Ireland series clash with All-Ireland champions Kerry in Killarney, but there was nothing but positivity in the air when Kevin McStay spoke to the assembled media last Friday morning at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park in Castlebar.
The Mayo manager wore the appearance of a man at ease with the world as he spoke about his squad, the Kerry challenge and lessons learned from the Connacht championship defeat at the hands of Roscommon.
That setback certainly hadn’t been factored into plans for the season according to the Ballina man and, when the result went against them, he and his management team sat down and reassessed their assault on the All-Ireland championship.
“The plan was to win the Connacht championship and be a number one seed which bestowed home advantage in the first match of the round-robin series. That was pushing you to be number one in the group and therefore straight into the quarter-final.
“That’s the route we wanted to take, but Roscommon beat us fair and square so we had to back off from that and analyse what we did well and didn’t do well.
“It was very disappointing,” he added. “We won the league the previous Sunday and I thought we were ready but Roscommon caught us. We knew this was going to be a tough game and they were the better team on the day.
“The next bit in front of us is a new tournament and that’s the reality of it. Only four of the teams going into the round robin are unbeaten in the championship and there’s no team in Ireland who haven’t lost a match this year. Everyone gets into the last 16 on merit and our focus now is can we pick up enough points in these three games to get into the next tournament, which is the All-Ireland series. That’s the way we’re thinking,” he explained before revealing some of the lessons learned from the Roscommon reversal.
“We learned we need to be more careful with the ball in our hands. The conditions didn’t help but it was the same for Roscommon. In the last 15 minutes we wandered away from what we were trying to do and panicked a bit. That was a disappointing aspect because we had a quite experienced outfit on the field at that stage.
“If your energy and enthusiasm is not where it should be then you’re in for a long day. You can have all the ‘couldas’ and ‘wouldas’ and ‘shouldas’, but with ten minutes to go Roscommon were going to win that match and we couldn’t bring it to the boil, so we had a lot of learnings.”
Now, all thoughts have turned to Killarney and the excitement of playing the All-Ireland champions in their home field.
Is the Kerry game the ideal one on which to relaunch Mayo’s season?
“I don’t see it like that,” replied McStay. “It’s just a game – a big game and I’m expecting a reaction. Nobody was happy with what happened against Roscommon and we’re better than that.
“Right now, our injury situation is really strong but that may change during the week because they’ll be half-killing each other out here trying to get into the match-day 26. Fellas will get bangs and wallops and nobody can control that, but if we keep building the way we are we’ll be very competitive.
“You could beat yourself up thinking about possible outcomes and what will happen down the line. The truth of the matter is we’re in a four-team group and you can’t go around saying, ‘This is life or death,’ because it isn’t life or death.
“What’s on offer next week is two points, one point, or zero points. And the objective is to garner enough points from the three games to get us into the All-Ireland series.
“At this level that’s all one can do,” he remarked before adding that he’s extremely happy with the dedication of his players in their quest to represent the county.
“The work being put in in order to play for Mayo is phenomenal. The effort put in to wear the jersey to do well for the county and to do well for the supporters is unreal..
“I can look in the eye of every Mayo supporter and say they’re working so hard to be the best they can be for Mayo. It’s never a lack of effort (that leads to defeat). It can be a little bit short of confidence or a bad day, or not being quite as good as we want them to be, but it’s never a lack of effort. That’s incredibly pleasing.”
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