Relief the main emotion as Higgins looks to future
“If we had lost that we’d only have ourselves to blame, we had so many chances and to win is the main thing I suppose,” said Higgins.
“On that performance today we’ll have to bring it up another couple of levels, that won’t be good enough in an All-Ireland quarter-final. But if we can sharpen up on a few things in the next couple of weeks, get the same work-rate we had there, hopefully we’ll be in with a shout.”
The intensity of the battle was such that the Mayo dual star didn’t realise that Andy Moran’s early goal had been chalked off because of an illegal handpass.
“To be honest I didn’t even know that their goal was disallowed until I looked up at the scoreboard about ten minutes later,” he said. “But that is the sort of stuff that goes on in a championship match: the next ball is the most important one.
“Hopefully that will stand to us. We had to dig deep there in the second-half. We weren’t playing especially well but maybe we won the important balls that got us the scores and hopefully that will stand to us later on in the year.”
Like his manager, Higgins was happy with the way the Mayo panel coped with the Conor Mortimer walk-out in the days leading up to the game.
“There was a lot of talk, but to be fair to the lads we didn’t buy into it at all,’’ he said.
Alan Dillon was one of Mayo’s shining lights for Mayo and he feels they have the wherewithal to go one step further than their semi-final defeat last year.
“A lot of these lads have experience now. It is still a young team but in the 18 months since James came in they have made an All-Ireland semi-final already,” he said.
“This year we are looking to go one step further. That was the goal at the start of the year; we have put in a huge effort since Christmas and we’ll see what happens in three weeks.
“We have a good few lads to come back, and if we get everyone back hopefully we can be in the shake-up.”
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