O’Shea: It was squeaky bum time, but we dug deep

There’s not so much excitement — they don’t have enough left in them for such an energetic emotion.

Instead, the air is thick and heavy with relief and as the Mayo players file out of the dressing room, they’ve been drained to the point that you could mistake them for a losing group. Beside the bus, Aidan O’Shea is cornered. “It was squeaky bum time,” is his assessment. It covers all their assessments and even though this is new to him, he plays it like an old hand.

“Everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong. We dug deep and dug out the result though. When we went 10 points up I was thinking about McHale Park in March, and maybe we might go a bit further.