Final woes have no relevance, says Moran
Of the team that started Sunday’s semi-final win over Dublin, just Moran, David Clarke, Keith Higgins and Alan Dillon played in the 2006 final defeat to Kerry.
“Look at that team there, that panel. You have a panel of 32 training. How many of them have lost an All-Ireland final? Not too many of them.
“I’m sure there’s a couple of them alright that have but the majority of them haven’t lost All-Ireland finals. We’re not going to look at that.
“To be quite honest with you, the hype will start around the place and that’s great for supporters but we’ll try to keep the heads down, not get sucked into it, just concentrate on Donegal and go from there.”
The Castlebar man insists the current group are free of any “baggage of the past”.
“It doesn’t worry us coming to Croke Park. We like coming to Croke Park. It’s a big pitch and it suits us, the way we’re playing. We’re playing some of our best football up here, to be quite honest.”
Having beaten Kerry, Down and Dublin at GAA HQ this year, Mayo’s recent record there is handsome and he puts down the latest success to their ability to keep their heads when they lost Andy Moran, Colm Boyle and Lee Keegan to injury and then when Dublin almost clawed back their 10-point deficit.
He was fully aware that people were discounting Mayo’s chances after losing their captain — “Everyone was saying, ‘Oh, Mayo aren’t going to win any more’.
“But Mickey Conroy, Enda Varley, Cillian O’Connor, I thought they were absolutely brilliant. They stepped up to the mark and showed what good footballers they are.
“We didn’t panic. People might say, ‘oh, previous Mayo teams were this, that or the other’. I don’t know about previous Mayo teams, I can only tell you about this one.
“But no, we’re not going to panic. We were in the same situation against Sligo in the Connacht final. We went in two points down at half-time and weren’t playing well, but we got the result.”
However, Moran admitted Mayo went to sleep in the closing 20 minutes and it did cross his mind at one stage that Dublin were going to gain revenge for the 2006 semi-final.
“It absolutely did. I suppose looking from a neutral [point of view] you’re thinking, ‘well, this is karma going to come back and bite us’ but thankfully we pulled.
“Dublin looked like they were going to pull through, but thankfully they didn’t.”
Even though Mayo are hoping to bridge a 61-year gap to their last All-Ireland title, Donegal’s 20-year famine is significant too. But Moran doesn’t believe the absence of a decorated county like Kerry, their final bogey team, or Meath is any advantage to Mayo.
“People are saying they don’t have the tradition or they mightn’t have the tradition but Donegal are the best team in the country if you’re going by what people are saying about them and how they played last week.
“It doesn’t matter who we’re playing, what jersey they have on or anything like that. We’ll just concentrate on the game. Simple as that.”
But how will Mayo combat Donegal’s structure? Moran admits he’s not certain of what way they will approach it.
“To be quite honest with you, I really don’t know. We haven’t looked at it. I saw Donegal play last weekend, they looked very, very impressive.
“From our point of view we just watched the game, we didn’t gointo specifics with them. I’m sure James and the backroom team are going to have a big long look at that and come up with something that we think can overcome it but we definitely know it’s going to be a huge challenge for us.
“Jimmy McGuinness, whatever he’s doing up there, he seems to have them flying. For us, in three weeks time we have to be on our ‘A’ game.”
