Heaney praises strength of squad as thoughts turn to Connacht final

Even though they won all four of their round robin games, there is still plenty for Mayo to improve upon in advance of the Connacht U17 football championship final.

That was the view of Mayo joint-manager David Heaney as Mayo held off a late rally by Sligo in the blazing heat for a four-point win, although the margin could have been much greater had Mayo taken at least one more of their goal chances.

“Delighted with the win obviously, probably the performance wasn’t as good as we thought it might be,” said Heaney afterwards.

“I thought we were very good in the first-half, could have scored possibly three, four, five goals but left them hanging in it and fair play to Sligo, they came back strong. I suppose they went for it, they had to go for it.

“We struggled in the second-half, just fumbled a lot of ball, lost around the middle, they picked up breaks, they got some clean catches. They put more pressure on us and we didn’t deal with it that well in the second-half.”

For the second game in-a-row, Mayo rang the changes once more, but David Heaney felt it was necessary given the conditions and said that any player who came in was more than capable of competing.

“We think we have 34 very good players so we don’t feel the subs coming on are of lesser value or lesser talent.

“The boys work so hard and especially in that heat it wouldn’t be possible for them to keep going for 60 minutes.

“In all the four games we’ve brought on five [substitutes]; it’s mainly a result of how hard they work and they just can’t do it for 60 minutes.

“I think the talent is still the same. It didn’t matter who we brought on anyway, Sligo got the upper hand at that stage and we just couldn’t grasp it back from them.”

Two of those players who impressed in the second-half were Joe Forry and Jack O’Malley. Forry missed the last two games due to a knock and Heaney said the Castlebar Mitchels attacker needed game time and was happy with what he saw from both.

“They’re brilliant players and they’re very good at training every night of the week as well and they’re very unlucky not to have started more.

“Jack has just been unlucky so it was good to get them minutes under the belt and going forward hopefully he’ll get a few more.”

Mayo will have to wait a week until they learn their final opponent and Heaney is expecting a tough challenge regardless of whether it’s Roscommon or Galway.

Either way, there is plenty for Mayo to work on over the next fortnight.

“We just need to be more consistent. Even last week against Leitrim, good in patches and then we’d go quiet for six or seven minutes and then go again for a minute or two. We just need to make the good patches last longer.

“Two very good teams in Roscommon and Galway, Roscommon seem to have really improved. They played us in the first game and it was our first game too so there’s a lot of mistakes but they seem to be motoring very well and they beat Sligo by six points as well so they’re in good shape.

“It’ll be good to go and watch it next week and see what we have to face.”