O’Neill: Mayo have been primed for this

Mayo coach Cian O’Neill has revealed the Connacht champions have been geared to perform for Saturday’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Down.

Although it involved some presumption, the Kildare native had tailored the team’s preparations to begin peaking from their third game this summer.

“Basically, we break down our season up into phases and it’s on a match-by-match basis,” said the UL lecturer. “We don’t factor in the difficulty or complexity of the opposition.