McStay doesn’t hide his hurt as focus now turns to league

Talk about making an entrance. The likelihood of a London victory was rated as 12/1 by bookmakers in advance of Sunday’s FBD Connacht Senior Football League clash with Mayo – London’s first time to be admitted into the competition.

And after Michael D. McAndrew pointed out the length of those odds to Kevin McStay after the game, it prompted the Mayo manager to ask the Midwest Radio match commentator, “Were you on them?” He wasn’t. Just like Mayo were not on their game, with the Exiles punishing a tremendously wasteful display by the ‘home’ side at the Connacht GAA Air Dome to run out one-point winners.

The disappointment of McStay was obvious, to the degree he seemed at one stage to check himself to perhaps avoid revealing some of his innermost feelings.

“My immediate thoughts are that we put a few lads out to see how they got on and, um…” 

Cue a couple of seconds of a pause.

“Yeah, it was a little bit disappointing. The result and our performance.” 

With eight players featuring in their first competitive game for the Mayo team, the manager conceded that the outcome was “kind of understandable” but that ultimately, the display was below his expectations.

“It wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t good enough for what we wanted out of today, and we’re out of the competition. We’ve always enjoyed this competition so it’s a little bit disappointing to be out at the quarter-final stage.

“We had been planning for next week and the semi-final. Not being presumptuous about it but it was certainly in our sights to get another game in the [FBD] league,” McStay admitted.

“I have to throw all the kudos in the direction of London. We thought at half-time they might run out of juice, we thought our extra physicality, our extra fitness levels might catch them. They didn’t. [London] stayed in the game. After Cillian’s goal it looked like we could probably make hay but we didn’t. They came back into it. They were a very well coached team, well put together and they stayed at it and good luck to them.” 

Cillian O’Connor’s 50th minute goal had sent Mayo into a 1-7 to 0-9 lead but the Green and Red were to add just one more point over the course of the final 25 minutes, which came from sub Conal Dawson’s free. By full-time they had kicked fourteen wides, seven of them inside the final twelve minutes of the match. The defeat means they have no other competitive game prior to their National Football League Division 1 opener away to Galway on January 26.

Kevin McStay said afterwards that perhaps he and his management had not fielded enough experience on the pitch. No doubt some of Mayo’s newcomers did struggle in the face of the pressure applied by the London team.

“It does go to show that they do need structure when they come in to try and make an impression. But we’re looking ahead to what’s ahead of us next week, and the week after that, and we’re trying to rest players to have them ready. There are games on our schedule that we are planning for, we can’t have the same players playing every match,” reasoned the manager who said the only real consequence of defeat was that the squad will now have two games next weekend instead of three, with a couple of challenge matches pre-planned regardless of last Sunday’s outcome.

“It just gives us a bit more clear space in which to get ready for the Galway game. Next weekend would have been a busy weekend for us, so we can focus now on just getting ready for three weeks’ time and have a look back at how the new lads did, see what we can take from it.

“We’re in the pre-season phase, there’s going to be ups and downs, we’re at different stages in our training. That team was never together before and we brought in a few extra club lads as well just to beef it up a small bit.

“I’m not too broke up about it but disappointed all the same; I thought we’d be in it.”