McHale hopeful Mayo can take a bite out of Orchard
Mayo footballer Maria Cannon celebrates after kicking the equalising point for DCU at the end of normal time in last Saturday's 2024 Ladies HEC O'Connor Cup final match against UCD in Cork, which DCU went on to win. Picture: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
Mayo manager Liam McHale is hoping a big performance and a big score is just around the corner for his young side and there would be no better time for this to happen than on the visit of high-flying Armagh to Ballina this St Patrick’s Day.
Despite a late venue change for their game against Cork, Mayo picked up a vital win over the Rebels two weeks ago that while not a mathematical guarantee, saw them take a giant leap towards safety.
It has not been all plain sailing for McHale’s charges given injuries to Ciara Needham, Sinead Cafferky and Eilis Ronayne while Fiona McHale also missed out on the trip to Cork. With such a young team and many in action for their college teams of late, a lot of players are away during the week but McHale feels that together, the squad and management have made the most of it.
“We felt that the Cork game was a big game as regards our status in Division One and we tried to get our players back and just couldn’t get them. You're training during the winter and it's obviously hard going,” said the Ballina man.
“You’re working without maybe eight or nine of your top players because they're college tied so you're only getting them at the weekends and you might get them at odd times. So that has been frustrating but there's nothing you can do about that.
“We've tried to make the most of it but we’ve put ourselves in a good position now and we should be okay as regards to our status in Division 1 and that's all we wanted. It's a fairly high level.” Mayo were competitive in defeats to Dublin and Meath, claimed an important win over Galway as well as a “massive” draw down in Kerry. McHale has been given a boost with the returns of Ciara Needham and Ronayne to training. Sinead Cafferky has started the last two games against Kerry and Cork while Aoife Staunton, Ciara Durkan and Chelsea Doherty are all pushing hard for starting places.
“We're in good shape and we have two big games left. As far as I can see the way you read the squad, everybody's in good form now and really looking forward to it.
”Their attitude is fantastic, they're very easy to work with, and all they want to do is get better and compete at this level, so we feel that we're in a pretty good position now at the moment. Two games at home after acquiring seven points, it’s a good spot to be in.” McHale added: “The girls have done great. We want to win these two games. It would be very innocent of us to say that we were going to win the league or get to the league final. What we wanted to do was improve, develop the roster and win enough games to stay up. So we're very grateful now that we're in the position.” A tough test awaits against in-form Armagh, who have won all five of their league games since their promotion from Division 2. They only require a point to guarantee a place in the Division 1 final, where there will look to make it back-to-back league titles.
The twin threats come in the shape of Aimee Mackin and captain Kelly Mallon. Both struck 1-4 in the win over Meath while Mackin struck 2-6 in a thumping victory over the Kingdom.
McHale is expecting a tight game and is conscious of the threat, drawing comparisons of Mackin’s impact to Kerry superstar David Clifford, but he believes Mayo have firepower of their own to match it as well as keeping Mackin and Mallon at bay.
“I know that young Kelly Mallon has played very well and Aimee Mackin, I guess, the David Clifford now of ladies' Gaelic football. But we've improved week in and week out defensively. We were giving away big scores at the start but we've knuckled down and got better at that.
“We're a lot more aggressive now in the last three games. We'll be planning now at home to be making it very difficult on them and looking to put up a good score.
“Against Cork, I thought we were kind of unlucky. Like the Galway game, we created some good chances. We had a penalty that we missed. So even though we were delighted to win by two, when you look back at the video and analyse, we could have won those games by six or seven points.
“I'm still hopeful, I'm very optimistic that the big performance and that big score is coming (on Sunday).”
