Horan's men weather the early storm

ALL-IRELAND SFC QUARTER-FINAL:DOING THE time warp: the last time Mayo went on a championship voyage from inauspicious beginnings in London to a semi-final meeting with Kerry – which didn't go well for their opponents – James Horan was a high-yield forward.

And who could argue with his productivity this season, 15 years later? In his first season as manager Horan has kept the county in Division One, regained the Connacht title and yesterday consigned the All-Ireland champions to the dustbin of history.

“We’re delighted with the win,” he said afterwards. “Our aim today was to come up and play as well as we can and work as hard as we could. Fortunately we outworked and outfought the opposition and that was the bedrock of the game. We’re delighted. We won the game and are looking forwards to moving on to the next step.”

And so the much anticipated (albeit umpteenth) All-Ireland semi-final meeting of Cork and Kerry has been shelved for this year. Who could have foreseen that Connacht football, in recent seasons all but re-registered as a charity, could have pulled a surprise this size out of its big, floppy red-and-green hat?

Horan was at pains to remind the media that the matches in the west this season have been so sabotaged by the elements that they hardly added up to a clear picture of the quality of football in the province. You could sense that the small audience wasn’t entirely persuaded by that explanation, however plausible it sounded.

The Mayo manager then adduced the sort of evidence that can’t be disputed.

“The breaking ball was eight to one after 15 minutes,” he explained. “Cork were dominating even though the guys were catching some clean ball but in the breaking ball we were getting beaten. We adjusted that and it seemed to work; we got the majority of possession around there and that enabled us to get the ball into Andy and the guys inside, who did a lot of damage. That was a huge part of the game.”

Mayo conceded just one point to the All-Ireland champions after half-time yesterday, a trend as Horan explained.

“Roscommon two (Connacht final) and Galway one (semi-final) so we must be doing something right in the second half. You saw the tackling and the work rate there today; whenever a Cork player got the ball there were two or three guys around him. The work rate was superb today.

“Fitness is important but the discipline in some of our tackling today was close to the edge, but very good. We were aggressive in the tackle and got the hands out when we needed to and conceded very few frees in the second half. The discipline and the set-up we have is very strong and the guys are working so hard that we’re getting results.”

Captain Alan Dillon concurred. “A huge second half performance. The first half disappointed in the amount of opportunities Cork were getting but we knuckled down in the second half, recycled the ball and moved it forward very effectively and took our scores when they came about and that was probably the big difference.

“It was enjoyable out there, a dry day and we could use the ball and move it fast and we’ve plenty of pace in the team . . . conditions were ideal.”

Asked had his team targeted the mileage on the champions’ clock, Horan made passing reference to the context of pre-match discussion. “There were a lot of factors . . . they’d a game recently, there was a lot of talk in the media about ‘Cork and Kerry’ in the semi-final. Maybe that influenced us somehow but I’m not sure.

“We knew if we could work as hard as we could we might shock them, I don’t think they were ready. We kept going after the scare of the goal chance, we worked for every single ball. We were stopping them in their tracks and they resorted to lobbing high balls in in the end and that was a great sign of where we were and how strong we were at the back. We’re just delighted.”