Classy Cillian confident Mayo will step up again

If there was one blot in Cillian O’Connor’s copybook last Sunday it was his missed goal chance in the first half. In a period where Kerry dominated, it may have arrested all the good work Mayo’s opponents had been doing.

Instead, Brian Kelly stood O’Connor up long enough to stymie him and his off-balance shot trickled wide.

“I just went around him and he made contact with me,” recalled O’Connor. “He didn’t make contact with the ball and he kind of knocked me off balance and I lost my footing then. But look it is not for me to be saying whether it was a free or a penalty. Those things happen, those are the decisions that happen in games and I think we reacted well to everything that happened.”

O’Connor certainly did. Look back on the second half and how after each of his scores he was making calls to ensure his forwards were alert and positioned so as not to allow Kerry a short kick-out and. His expert steal on Aidan O’Mahony which initiated a score for Alan Dillon. His clinical finish to convert the 59th minute penalty. His excellent point a minute later.

His tour de force was enough to see him collect a third consecutive man of the match award in what is surely already an All Star-winning year for the 22-year-old. But what gave him the greatest heart was the reaction of the team to Lee Keegan’s red card and Kerry going five points up in the first minute of the second half.

“We played a lot of good football in the second half and we will take a lot of positives from that and we showed great character. A lot of our boys stood up; playing with 14 men for a lot of the game is not easy and we all had to take an extra bit of responsibility and I think we reacted well to Lee’s sending off.

“We were not happy with the last 15 minutes of the first half. We were a bit flat for whatever reason and then the sending off was a bit surprising and maybe it threw us off a little bit. We sorted a few things, changed a few things tactically at half-time and we had to make a conscious decision to step-up to the plate for Lee’s sake.

“We closed the five-point gap very quickly at the start of the second half and we kicked on but they are a good side, they have good players, they have match-winners in a lot of different positions. They were always going to have a good spell and I think we coped with them very well through most of the game but they got a few scores towards the end.”

O’Connor beams positivity. You can tell him Mayo had a let-off and point him in the direction of James O’Donoghue’s late chance to win it but he mention the opportunities Mayo had at the death to win it such as Tom Cunniffe’s shot.

“Donie [Vaughan] popped it off to Tom and Tom just put it wide. We missed chances as well. We kicked uncharacteristic wides ourselves in the first half which we were disappointed with and which we have to learn from and not do it the next day.”

The Ballintubber man can just about recall playing a minor game in the Gaelic Grounds a couple of years back. The venue may be an issue for others but not him.

“It makes no odds to us. Croker suits our game when we move it quickly and hit the open spaces but it does not make any odds to us and neither will it to Kerry.

“We just want to play ball and try to impose our game on them, move it as quickly as we can up the field and play directly.”

And after finding themselves in last Sunday’s second half more so by accident than design Mayo have discovered the most conducive way of setting themselves up against Kerry.

“We played with a little bit more freedom in the second half, we had no choice really and that is the game that suits us. We like to use the ball as fast as we can. Andy [Moran] came in and gave us a bit of extra focus inside, and we kicked the ball in and moved it quickly and I think that is when we are at our most dangerous.

“We know how we want to play but it is not as simple as that. There are a lot of components that go into that, you have to factor in the opponents and what they are going to do. I would not say that we have it nailed or sussed or anything like that. We know how we want to play but imposing it on them is a different question.

“We need to try and play as direct and as fast as we can, move it on quickly when we get frees and stuff. We did it [last Sunday] for 40 minutes, even in the first 10 to 12 minutes. We did it but we did not do it for the full game.”