Heaney glad of opportunity to test strength of squad

It’s not often you win by 13 points yet the performance is considered not up to scratch. It was a comfortable win for Mayo in the end on Friday, but joint minor manager David Heaney admitted his team had difficulties in dealing with how Leitrim had set their stall out.

“We struggled in the first-half. They had 15 men behind the ball and it took a while. I suppose you have to remember they're 16 and 17-years-old and it took them a while to figure it out.

“I think once they've played against that type of system, and I have a feeling we might see it again, hopefully it'll stand to them the next time, but we need to be better.

“We kind of played to their pace. We were too slow and that's exactly what they wanted. We just didn't have runners coming through fast enough on the ball so look, we improved in the second-half but we need to be better probably.

“I don't think we played that well generally. Even balls going in, we were fumbling balls and we weren't getting our first touch right and whatever the reason, because the conditions were perfect.

“But Leitrim, they tackled it hard, they hit hard, they had numbers. When the ball went up front there was no space for the lads either, so it was a dour sort of game – probably not great for the viewer, but we're delighted. We still won by 13 points, so we’ll take that every day of the week.” 

Mayo struggled to get their hands on the ball in the early exchanges. The Green and Gold were well-equipped to get out of any tackles that came their way, the midfield duo of Bailey McBride and Cormac Moran in particular very impressive.

“For the first ten minutes of the half, I said to Ciaran (McDonald) ‘we’ve hardly touched the ball’. They were very good to be fair. They hugged the sidelines and we were trying to press them and push them onto the sidelines but they seemed to get out of tackles.

“We tried to press up our half-back line then and the full-back line to follow them but their ball handling was brilliant for the first 10 or 15 minutes. We just couldn't get our hand on the ball at all.

“We always thought once we got ahead we thought they'd have to come out of their shell. Once we got the first goal it kind of opened up a little bit, but even still we wouldn't be happy with a score of 3-8.” 

The introduction of Owen Loughney proved a masterstroke. The Lacken lad’s work-rate and ability to win ball was crucial. Heaney praised his ‘demon’ of a player and the rest of the players on the pitch who upped it by ’10 to 15 per cent’.

Mayo are now assured of their place in the Connacht final on May 24 and there will likely be more rotation for the final group game in Sligo.

“It’s only when playing you realise the amount of work [Owen] gets around in the middle. The team played a lot better overall.

“We want to use as much of the panel as we can. They've been training hard for probably four or five months now. It's one thing to train but they're young lads, they want to play games, so we saw today as an opportunity.

“I think we had six changes and now I believe on the other result that we are through to the Connacht final. So potentially we'll make another three or four or five, maybe against Sligo next week, because we can afford it at this stage now.” 

See page 15 for a report of the Connacht U17 Round 4 meeting of Sligo and Roscommon.