Horan lauds dead-eye O’Connor

SEVEN weeks ago, Mayo’s Connacht title ambitions were almost misplaced on a weekend away in the English capital.

Yesterday, they were declared provincial champions in their opponents’ back yard and that transformation from zeroes to heroes can be distilled into a cursory examination of their belated ability to find someone dependable enough to do a job from placed balls.

Back at the end of May, seven of James Horan’s squad stood up to have a pop at the posts in Ruislip. Against Galway in the semi-final, that number had diminished to a still alarming four but only one man was required yesterday.

Take a bow, Cillian O’Connor.

The Ballintubber corner-forward kicked nine frees in the Hyde and all bar one bisected the posts above Geoffrey Claffey’s head.

On a dirty and wild day like yesterday, each one was a priceless deposit on a slowly churning scoreboard.

“He had a lot of people shouting at him for his first free at the Roscommon end but he is a class guy, very composed for a 19-year-old, and he was exceptional today with them,” said manager James Horan.

“On a day with conditions like this and in a Connacht final frees do make a difference.”

O’Connor’s candidacy for this most important and individualistic of roles began to crystallise through the many kicking drills conducted in the weeks since the Galway game.

He was fortunate because his first few efforts were from a distance and angle that all but negated the wind blowing directly into his face but, still, it was the kind of weather that has downed many a man’s radar before.

“First-half against Galway we were very disappointed with our conversion rate but Cillian is an excellent footballer and an excellent striker of the ball,” said Alan Dillon.

“He is a club-mate of mine. I was striking them for the last eight or nine years but I wasn’t striking them too well.

“For me as captain I was just delighted that we had players in the squad that could stand up and take that responsibility like that. It’s great that it came off today and I suppose he will go to the last eight with huge confidence.”

Mayo, too.

They are by no means the finished article and will require much more than the guts and grind that got them through this assignment but what a turnaround they have engineered since that scare in Ruislip less than half a summer ago.

“We train Tuesday night and we will take it from there,” said Horan.

“It is a couple of weeks before we are back out. Nothing is sure yet. We will look to step it up another level because we will need to if we are to be competitive in the quarter-finals.”

For now, they should take the time to let all this sink in. They travelled to Roscommon in the unfamiliar guise of underdogs and quelled a hostile home crowd and side eager to build on their surprise win in this fixture 12 months earlier.

It was a good day’s work.

“We are delighted,” said the manager. “It probably wasn’t a classic game but it was never going to be given the conditions like that and the fact that it was a Connacht final. We worked hard, got a lot of turnovers and kicked our frees and got there in the end. It was very similar to the Galway game.

“We were four points down at half-time but, looking at the facts and figures, we were dominating possession and breaking ball and obviously the breeze was a huge factor. We knew if we got that much ball in the second-half that we would get the shots that we needed to win the game and it worked out that way.”