Mayo senior football team manager Kevin McStay. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile
By Cian O'Connell
Kevin McStay is confident Mayo can respond following another Connacht SFC Final defeat against long time foes Galway.
Padraic Joyce's outfit scored three of the last four points to retain the Nestor Cup on Sunday. "Unless I believe in what we are doing, I can hardly sell that to the players, but I don't have to because I know they will react," McStay remarked following Sunday's thrilling encounter.
"But they are so sore now and disappointed and it is a tough dressing room right now.
"We have only ourselves to blame about how this is, we got into a position to win it, we didn't win it and we need to reflect on that now, to see can we improve."
McStay wants Mayo to become more clinical in the closing stages of high profile matches. "We need to improve fairly quickly at seeing out these games," McStay added.
"I thought we had in the league, we had seen out a few of the tight ones, but it just didn't quite transpire for us, even though like, Galway have the cup now, we had one shot to draw it.
"That is how close this bloody thing is, but close is no good."
Mayo trailed by eight points at the break, but came fighting back to draw level midway through the second half.
So, McStay acknowledged it was bitterly disappointing to lose considering Mayo were backed by a strong breeze after the restart. "Yeah and that's you know, that is an issue for the group, we're not going to run away from it, we'll be talking about it again next Friday night I'm sure," McStay says.
"We had three of them last year if you remember, big matches and we didn't see them out and here's the first one of this season again now that we feel we've left it behind, but I know Galway will argue otherwise.
"I mean they had a big part to play in the second half too. But yeah it's a sore one, I won't shy away from that, we put an awful lot into this, this was a date in the diary 12 months ago, whenever the draw was made we thought this was a day we could get back."
