Plain sailing for Mayo in London but Moran finds room for improvement

The result never seemed in doubt yet for all his usual exuberance, you could still sense the relief in Andy Moran afterwards. And understandably so.

Never mind Mayo’s near-death experience when last they had visited Ruislip in 2011, Andy Moran was in only his third game as an inter-county manager when London recorded a National League victory over his Leitrim side in 2022.

His first year as Mayo manager has been a somewhat smoother ride thus far – and Saturday’s victory over the Exiles was probably even more comfortable than the 13 points margin at full-time suggested.

“I’m delighted it’s done and it’s over,” said Andy Moran afterwards. And yet in some ways the real work of the trip was only about to get underway, with the Mayo squad remaining in London for a chunk of this week to train in preparation for a much sterner championship examination on Sunday week.

“This week, it’s hard to explain it, logistically it’s a very difficult game,” continued Moran. “The key thing was we had three weeks [since the league] to do it and we got it done quite well. There’s so many bits to it, getting fellas on planes, getting passports ready, all that sort of stuff. Sometimes your focus gets taken away from the training but we tried hard not to let that happen, and it helped.

“When you arrive and get settled it’s just a normal game. But we hadn’t played for three weeks so a lot of them guys there today, McBrien, Carney, they wouldn’t have played a competitive game since we played Roscommon, so it was important to get that game under our belt and to get going.

“Our week kind of takes off now. We hope to meet a good few of the supporters this evening and we’ll go and do a bit of training over the next couple of days,” explained Moran who interestingly had his former Ballaghaderreen teammate, ex-London footballer and Arsenal FC’s first team S&C coach Barry Solan among his backroom entourage on Saturday.

Wind-assisted in the first-half, Mayo kicked seven two-pointers before half-time and yet the manager was actually critical of his players for, at times, overlooking the simpler option and preferring to seek out the higher-value scores.

“We overcooked it a bit with the two-pointers I think, where there were chances to run in and tap over a one and setup again for the kickout and go for the next attack,” said Andy Moran, his side having also kicked eight wides along with their first-half tally of 0-17.

“Luckily we went in eleven up and we had enough of a gap to be quite comfortable there in the second-half.

“Our efficiency in front of goal, we need to make it better. In the league and today, we’ve put up really good scores in six of those games but I think we can be way more efficient in front of goal.” 

There was a noticeable improvement in that regard after half-time when against the breeze, Mayo didn’t kick a single wide. Team captain Jack Coyne saw one shot from a very narrow angle bounce back into play off the post while Cian McHale was unfortunate to see one effort from an equally tight position drop just short into the goalkeeper.

“I think we can be way more efficient in front of goal and that’s where Cian gives us something different. When he does drop one short, he doesn’t normally drop the second one short afterwards,” continued Moran.

“We had a plan in the second-half and when you have the likes of Ryan O’Donoghue and Jack Carney on the pitch, they can control that for you, and they did. I thought Paddy (Durcan) was excellent in the second-half as well in terms of controlling the play. Michael Plunkett was excellent from six and I thought it went quite well. It’s just about having the right players on the pitch to do that.” 

It was Plunkett’s first time to start a championship match for Mayo since 2022, likewise goalkeeper Robbie Hennelly, while for Paul Towey, after a run of 12 appearances off the bench since 2021, this was actually the corner-forward’s first ever time to start a senior championship match for his county. He had been favoured over a fully fit Tommy Conroy, explained Andy Moran.

“We were very tempted to start [Tommy] today but the boys had done too much, Towey had done too much over the last couple of weeks and performed well. It was a huge milestone for him and his club Charlestown. It was important to recognise that and I thought Paul did quite well. But it was great to see Tommy back, great to see Cillian (O’Connor) back on the field, and a few more on top of it.”