‘We got a slap in the face but we’ll learn’

The honeymoon ended on Valentine’s weekend, not that Andy Moran was expecting a bouquet of flowers from Jim McGuinness.

“I think you know it can’t be all roses,” was Moran’s response to the idea that this had been a rather sobering afternoon for Mayo in Letterkenny after opening wins against Galway and Dublin.

There was nothing lovey-dovey about how Donegal inflicted a first league defeat of the season upon Moran and Mayo, the home side’s victory every bit as comprehensive as the 1-19 to 0-14 scoreline suggested. But nor was Moran going to allow himself get too downbeat about a result which had been determined by a quite abject first-half display from the Green and Red.

“What I would say about our lads, I’d be very, very disappointed with the first 26 or 27 minutes but I think for the rest of the game we actually performed well. But you cannot give Donegal a six point lead [when you’re] playing against the wind for the second-half.

“They had a very strong team out, we had a strong team out as well but they went heavy and right from the off they were a step ahead of us.

“We’d a plan today, we got a slap in the face and had to adapt but we’ll learn from that and we’ll go again,” he assured. “That’s the great thing about the league; every week you get the chance to go and improve whereas when Mayo got beat by Donegal last year in the championship, that was it.” 

By one point on that occasion, it was eight this time around as Conor O’Donnell, Oisin Gallen and schoolkid debutant Conor McCahill on their own scored more than the entire Mayo team.

So what was that slap in the face that Andy Moran spoke about?

“I think we gave it to ourselves more than Donegal gave it to us,” he offered. “We kept giving them back the ball and kept giving it back in different ways to how we played the first two weeks. That would be the disappointing thing for us.

“We just wanted half-time to come fifteen minutes earlier than it came. When it came we sorted it out and it was fine.

“The way we played wasn’t what we had set out as a team in the hotel last night. But that’s okay, we’ll learn from it and we’ll come back,” said Moran who opined that the root cause of Mayo’s woes on the day “was all because we weren’t good enough up top” and a lack of quality supply, particularly in the first-half.

“We had a lot of experience out there and I think we should have done a tiny bit better, but we’re trying to find the mix. It’s a new team and we’re trying to put the pieces together. We tried Diarmuid (O’Connor) inside today with James Carr but I wouldn’t really blame that line, it was more the ball going into them.

“We lost the second-half half by two points but had four, maybe five goal chances. The first 25 minutes was the problem so that’s what we need to work on. But the second-half, we know we can play, we know we can compete at this level, but we need to do it over a 70, 77 minute stretch.

“[Donegal] were the second best team last year in the whole country. They had a full hand there today, the back six was [last year’s] back six, their midfield was their midfield, they had a strong unit out and are probably a month or two ahead of us if I’m being honest. And then you’ve that bit of class up front, Conor O’Donnell and Oisin Gallen, that made a big difference.” 

Having started Mayo’s opening Division 1 game against Galway, Tommy Conroy was a notable absentee from the Mayo attack for the second game running with what Andy Moran described as a “tiny” injury.

“Our hope for Tommy is that he plays championship. Our aim is to get him to the championship and if we do we’ll be very happy. Will we play him in the next two rounds of the league? I would say it’s doubtful, but we’ll wait and see. If he’s fit and he’s ready to go, we will. There’s nothing major but just with his injury history, we’re trying to mind him.”