O’Hora to the rescue as Mayo refuse to give up their crown

FOR a few moments before the end, it wasn’t looking too good for Mayo. Dublin had taken a slender lead with the seconds ebbing away.

Finbarr Egan felt his team needed something, but after five years coaching this team, he was not about to panic.

Then, right on cue, Diana O’Hora latched onto a free from Cora Staunton’s free to slam the ball to the net for the game’s decisive score. Egan seemed to be the only one in Croke Park who expected such a miracle.

“Yeah, I am delighted. I think what you saw there at the end was the culmination of five years’ hard training,” said the Mayo manager. “Dublin are a fantastic team and they had us beat. But, this team have a lot of heart and they play to the very last second. And that is what you saw out there.”

It wasn’t the most memorable Mayo performance in their five years domination of the ladies game. However that fact doesn’t make an iota of difference to Egan.

“Okay, the second half didn’t go for us, it wasn’t a great performance. There were terrible conditions out there, players were slipping all over the place,” he said.

“It was a physical game, and there was only a bounce of the ball between the teams. You saw that in the way we won it with the last kick of the game. It may not have been a great game, I don’t know, but it is better to win a bad one that lose a good one.”

Helena Lohan, Mayo’s full-back, stands in the corridor of Croker with the cup in her hands. An All-Ireland winning captain at 20, with four championship medals for prosperity.

Did she think the team were about to give up their crown?

“I didn’t know how much time was left when Diane scored the goal. I thought there was still 10 or 15 minutes left.

“And then I looked up at the clock and saw there was less than a minute. I couldn’t believe it. The second half just flew.

"I think everyone on this team worked so hard to pull this result out. But this is a big day for us. All the girls in there played their hearts out for each other, and I think that comes from the bond we have built over the past few years.”

Diane O’Hora missed last year’s All-Ireland title because she was working in the States. When she arrived back this year, she was unsure of her place. Yesterday, she repaid Finbarr Egan’s faith in her, scoring the bulk of Mayo’s total, including that all-important goal.

She downplayed her heroic role. “I think the goal just came from the girls knowing they had to dig deep. I was aware that there wasn’t much time left, I think we all were, but you dig deep when you are down.

"I can’t really remember the goal, you want to savour the moment when you are out there, but it is hard to do it in the middle of a game.”

Down the hall, Mick Bohan comes out of a dejected Dublin dressing-room. His team have met up 147 times over the course of the year, but weren’t prepared for a heart-wrenching end like that. “I would have put my house on us winning this game. And I thought after Sinead scored that point, that we were going to win it.

“I haven’t experienced enough losing dressing-rooms to describe the scenes in there. Everyone on this team gave their heart out there. They have put an awful lot into this year. In many ways, they are winners.

“They just lost a football match.”