Mayo boss Andy Moran gunning for Croke Park and quarter-finals

Mayo manager Andy Moran. Picture: Ryan Byrne/Inpho

Mayo boss Andy Moran believes “anything could happen” in the All-Ireland quarter-finals for his team now that they have hit their goal for the year of making it back to Croke Park.

Moran spoke after his side’s epic comeback defeat of Meath in Castlebar about how they had waited four years to play another Championship game in the GAA’s headquarters.

They’re last Championship appearance in Dublin is actually only three years back– a quarter-final defeat to Dublin – but even that feels too long for a county of its calibre.

And anyway, managers gilding the lily to steel a side to a task no crime.

“We haven’t been in Croke Park for a long time, getting a game like that. You could sense that the crowd was getting behind the lads in Monaghan, you could definitely sense it in Omagh [against Tyrone] after the game and we talked about it in the dressing-room, how the crowd was there today to support the boys.

“You could hear it coming down the stretch and just before half-time. The Mayo football community is a very intelligent crew. They’re not easy at times to me and everybody else but that’s life, that’s the job we’re in. They are a very intelligent football county and they knew that we had turned the screw a tiny bit before half-time which was huge. You could see the emotion out there and it was huge.” 

Mayo were soundly beaten by Roscommon in this year’s Connacht final but Moran insisted that, despite suggestions in the local media, the provincial prize was not their be-all-and-end-all for 2026 as what he called a promising young side looked to kick on.

And he credited that young collective for setting the foundations for this run to the last eight.

Mayo’s Jordan Flynn scores a vital two pointer. Picture: Ryan Byrne/Inpho

“The lads asked hard questions of themselves after the Roscommon game. They are the ones that met straight after it that week. It wasn’t a nice meeting, I’m sure, I wasn’t allowed in. They asked the questions of themselves and it was them that came up with those solutions.” 

This seems to be the most egalitarian of championships with every one of the 12 teams left in it at the star of this weekend having lost at least once. Mayo have lost twice but they have the bit between their teeth as they await their fate in Monday’s quarter-final draw.

“The last couple of years the boys have been looking in, peeping in through the window trying to get in to it, now they’re back in the big time, a quarter-final, and anything could happen in a quarter-final.

“You just wouldn’t know, let’s wait and see,” said Moran. “We’ll patch up a few bodies. It looks like Paddy [Durcan] might be out for next week. We’ll patch up a few bodies and go from there.”