Heaney takes great heart in ‘never-say-die’ spirit of players

Regrets, there were a few, But then again, too few to mention.

David Heaney was determinedly upbeat despite the agonising nature of Mayo’s loss in Friday’s final of the Connacht minor football championship.

The joint manager had seen his side lose two of its best players to injuries either side of the half-time whistle yet still they turned a three points deficit into a four points lead against a team that had beaten them by nine points earlier in the competition.

The exertions eventually took their toll however, and Roscommon managed to sneak a two points win over a Mayo side whose midfielders Cian May (wrist) and Adam Kelly (shoulder) were forced off in the 30th and 34th minutes.

“I’m so proud of the players. They couldn’t have left anything else out there,” David Heaney said. “They’ll be very disappointed but the performance they put in, their never-say-die attitude… we had a lot of tough breaks today.

“We just ran out of bodies. And even when the lads went off, we still did okay around the middle but there was a bit of bad luck.

“Roscommon are a very good team, we knew that from the first day, but we knew they weren’t nine points better than us so I’m happy that we put up a good performance and that we pretty much showed our true colours,” added Heaney.

Mayo had entered the game on the back of scoring three goals in each of their previous four outings and made the dream start on Friday, with Tony Carey firing to the visitors’ net after just one minute of play. It was something of a false down however, as by half-time it was Roscommon who held a three points lead.

“We were disappointed at half-time to have only scored 1-4,” admitted David Heaney. “We had started so well but we just stopped kicking the ball in. There was two or three hand-passes just a little bit off and I think they lost a bit of confidence then and stopped kicking it in. We got very slow around the middle then. But we regrouped at half-time and started moving it a bit quicker and the third quarter was very fruitful for us.

“Tony (Carey) was on fire inside so we just said for the first five or six balls, just hit a few long ones into Tony because he had the beating of his man. He got another three or four points from play in the second-half.

“But Adam’s loss on top of Cian’s began affecting us, particularly on breaking ball, and they got on top for a while. But I wouldn’t say a bad thing about our lads, they were absolutely outstanding I thought.” 

Despite their defeat, Mayo still advance to the All-Ireland Series and will take on the Leinster champions in just under four weeks’ time. They must wait until next week, however, before discovering their exact opposition, as Louth and Offaly are set to play their provincial decider in Newbridge on Monday, May 19.

From his own point of view however, Heaney does not envisage it being too difficult to pick up the Mayo players from the disappointment of their Connacht final defeat.

“We need the four weeks to heal up a little bit. We’ll take a break for a few days and get back and watch the video and see what we did well and what we did wrong. But we did so much more good than bad. If we played them again it could be two points the other way, we’re there or thereabouts, and it’s a great carrot to have that game in four weeks’ time.

“We won’t be afraid of any team really. We’ve played a lot of teams in challenges and the lads kind of know how good they are if they play well on the day and if we have the full complement of our best players.”