Mayo happy to ‘embrace’ the attention

Mayo selector Tom Prendergast played down the suggestion his side might have been better beating Donegal by a point to reduce the level of expectation building ahead of the All-Ireland semi-final with Tyrone.

With the county almost unbackable at 2/7 in the bookies to beat the Ulster side he admitted they are embracing the attention that has come their way since the Donegal rout.

“We’re happy enough with attention,” he said. “We’re here to be as good as we can be. If that means winning games and winning well then great.

“I don’t think we’ve achieved a level of performance that we can start sandbagging. We go out to perform as best as we can. We can only control our own performance. It’s ours and that’s what we concentrate. We try to perform as well as we can and we still have plenty to improve on from the Donegal game. We’re not worried about the margin of victory.”

The reason for his confidence is the belief within the squad that Mayo have improved each year under James Horan and took the lessons from previous defeats on board.

Following last year’s final loss to Donegal the management team sat down and established a game-plan to improve for this year.

“We worked hard on becoming a more potent attacking team and worked hard on our skills and skills execution. We tried to be a more fluid team this year and worked hard on our tackle to improve on our tackle.

“We like to think we’re getting there and everybody knows it’s difficult to consistently tackle well in Gaelic football because sometimes there doesn’t appear to be consistency in the interpretation of it. There is a tackle. Some people say it’s not defined [in the rules] but it is and we’re working very hard at that aspect of the game.”

That evolution has been in play since their loss to Kerry in the 2011 semi-final.

“In hindsight we’ve learned quite a bit. After the Kerry game we were very determined that we’d put all the lessons we’d learned together to get back to that stage again and show that we had improved. We performed well for a significant proportion of it but it ran away form us in the end. We reviewed it and looked at the areas we could improve on and did the same after 2012.”

As for the debate regarding Tyrone’s approach to the tackle and the subsequent furore: “That’s a bigger picture question. From our point of view we’re focusing on what we have to do against Tyrone on the 25th.

“We’re focusing on the rules in place and playing within those rules, tackling as well as we can. We’re not going to get dragged into the rights or wrongs of that particular debate. Maybe, at the end of the year, we might jump at that question.”

One thing he is convinced about is that Tyrone will present a more serious threat than Donegal did.

“You don’t go to Croke Park for an All-Ireland semi-final expecting the outcome to be similar in terms of our numbers or whatever.

“Tyrone are a strong team and have come through some tight games. They have a way of playing that is difficult to play against. They are very well set-up. They concede easy scores. We’ll be expecting it to be a difficult challenge.”