“We were under par in every sector”

YOU tiptoe into the Mayo dressing room after another All-Ireland defeat and wince at the thoughts of having to try and interview men like James Nallen and Liam McHale.

What do you say? What do they say? Three All-Ireland defeats now for each of them.

The mid-Nineties might have been traumatic but at least then they were within a whisker of the ultimate prize.

So what went wrong this time? Nallen couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but McHale’s view from the sideline allowed for a more clear-cut synopsis. No beating about the bush with the big man, Kerry simply learnt the lessons of the past three years and passed on the baton of pain and disillusionment to Mayo.

“It was like a good U21 team against a good senior team,” the Mayo selector offered unambiguously. “I’ve been talking to lads like Jack O’Connor and Jimmy Deenihan and they were saying that they’ve just lived in the gym on the off-season for the last few years, I suppose preparing themselves for Tyrone and Armagh.

“They just blew us out of the water. They were way too strong for us around the middle of the field and they must have won 85% of possession. They were just banging high balls in on top of us and we just couldn’t take it.

“I don’t believe that we’re not as good footballers as those lads. It’s just that this Kerry team has turned into a machine like Armagh and Tyrone, big, strong, athletic, physical men.

“We said it all along, that if we were going to be beaten this year, it would be by a team that was better than us. There’s no question but that was the case today. It was just a step too far for us. The unfortunate thing is that we just didn’t ask any questions of Kerry. People were saying we were a few years ahead of ourselves, getting to this final, and maybe that was proven there today.”

For Nallen, it’s simply too soon to unravel the muddle that is his mind.

“We were well below par probably because of their intensity.

“They were very, very good and they controlled the game, no question about it. We were there and thereabouts in patches.

“You can’t explain it. The days you play well, everything blends. The days you don’t, it’s a case of all the cogs not turning. We just struggled to get our team game going. We couldn’t get the ball into the inside forward line and even when we got it there, we found it very difficult to hold onto possession.”

“We’re disappointed that we didn’t deliver the performance that we would have expected from each and every player. I don’t think anyone played up to par or grasped the opportunity.”

For Nallen and his five defensive colleagues, it must have been nightmarish, particularly in the first half, when Kerry sent a barrage of balls down their necks, from which John Crowley, Dara Ó Cinnéide and Colm Cooper did untold damage. An unexpected tactic maybe but, in fairness to Nallen, he didn’t use that as a get-out-jail-card.

“Regardless of whether it was expected or not, all those balls that came in were 50-50 balls. We just did badly on them. We would have expected to be more dominant in the aerial exchanges, but in every sector we were under par.”