Horan concentrates on keeping charges focused

His team have amassed an aggregate winning margin of 29 points in their two Championship outings so far and James Horan doesn’t mind it one bit.

Going for a third provincial crown in as many years, this attempt has so far been the easiest for Mayo and the manager isn’t worried in the slightest that it has been all so facile for his men.

Although, he did point out Mayo took their foot off the gas in the second half when they hit nine wides and in the final 20 minutes were intercepted and dropped the ball on a number of occasions.

“I’ll take winning games by 29 points anytime. Obviously, we didn’t get everything out of that game,” he said in relation to the lack of a challenge put up by Roscommon.

“We got sloppy and we dropped our standards so we need to look at that. We got a bit selfish instead of playing for ourselves so that gives us plenty to work on even though we won comfortably.

“You always find out more from closer games but we can only play what’s in front of us and we have to make sure we get competitive. Our training and our in-house games are pretty competitive so we’ll us that as a springboard.”

Horan pointed out Roscommon had the lion’s share of possession from the kick-outs in the first quarter on a day when Mayo went without a goal despite Richie Feeney’s gilt-edged opportunity in the 64th minute.

“I don’t know how Richie Feeney didn’t score [a goal], I’ll have to have words with him about that, it’s not good for our stats Richie! Dillo [Alan Dillon] was very unlucky as well in the first five minutes although Roscommon dominated. We’d two very good goal chances but we didn’t take any of them today and will keep working on that.”

Horan confirmed David Clarke was replaced after feeling a tweak in his right leg after a kick-out.

As for how Mayo will deal with the favourites tag again on July 21, he said: “[We’ll] keep plugging away. We were raging hot favourites for this game, we just need to up our levels, our standards, all the time. We let them drop in the second half, we’ll work hard to lift them again.

“We know that if we do our stuff, that we’re very capable. We’re just trying to make sure we do that and keep it to a high level.”