'You have to finish your chances': Tipp mix the good with the bad and the ugly at Croke Park

Tipperary manager David Power: "There were a couple of positives but it's a huge learning curve for us there as well."

Depending on what you class as a goal chance, Tipperary created between 10 and 12 of them at Croke Park, converting just three.

From Michael Quinlivan and Conor Sweeney's early wastage to the slew of second-half attempts that flew by the posts, it was where manager David Power's mind went straight to after the defeat.

"The two big things we learned, number one you have to finish your chances," said Power. "We'd two serious goal chances in the first few minutes and had we got them it's probably a different game. But also we turned over way too much ball in the first-half, 3-6 came from our turnovers.

"They're the two big things but we have to set a goal now. That's what I said to the players, this can't be just a once off. We need now to be heading to Division 2 next year, that has to be the target.

"We need to be playing against those teams regularly. For us, I thought we kept playing the right way. We set a target to win the second-half and we did win the second-half. There were a couple of positives but it's a huge learning curve for us there as well. We need to move the ball a lot quicker out of defence, we need to become more comfortable with the ball.

"Our skillset has to improve, our finishing has to become more clinical. They are all different areas. Over the last couple of weeks, we hadn't that much time to do that kind of coaching because we are going game to game. So these are all things to work on."

If the goal chances that Tipperary didn't take were a frustration for Power, the goals that Mayo did were even moreso. A couple of them were gifts too.

"Absolutely, you can't gift good teams those kinds of chances," agreed the 2011 All-Ireland minor winning manager. "And I always felt we had to take our own chances. We scored 3-13 and I'd say we could have left another five, six goals behind us. That's the thing, we played really, really good football but we have to learn.

This is a big learning curve for us but then for us to get here from where we were at the start of the year, it has been an incredible journey.

Power felt that Tipp "got a lot of joy out of the high diagonal ball" into the danger area and that they troubled Mayo in various ways.

"We had looked at different areas, it's just unfortunate we weren't able to take those chances," he said. "I felt we needed a good start and if we'd got those two goals I think it's a different game because all of a sudden then Mayo are playing with a bit of pressure on them.

"For the underdogs, you have to get that good start to put a bit of pressure on the favourites and that was a thing we'd worked on and unfortunately it just didn't pay off for us."

Afterwards Power and captain Conor Sweeney led the team to the Hill 16 end of the ground where they placed a wreath to commemorate the Bloody Sunday victims.

"That was a thing I spoke about with the county board," he said. "We only told the players during the week. We didn't make a big deal out of it because we just wanted to concentrate on the game.

"The players have been fantastic and I want to thank the GAA because it was great to have 41 players there today. They have all trained so hard over the last two months. The last six, seven weeks has been a great journey for Tipperary football.

The big thing for Tipp football now is that we make a habit of going back to these stages.