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Horan delighted with Mayo's energetic finish

Mayo manager James Horan.

Mayo manager James Horan.

By Colm Gannon

Mayo’s increased energy levels in the second half was key to their come from behind win over Dublin in Croke Park on Saturday night according to manager James Horan.

After a tentative first half display from his side, in the second half they took the game to Dublin andforced extra-time before seeing off the All Ireland champions by three points.

Even though they didn’t play the well in the opening 35 minutes felt they could have been closer than they were at the break.“We were probably tentative if the first 15 to 20 minutes, you know whether we should push forward or hold, got a bit caught in that maybe," Horan reflected.

“Even with that we had three or four bad wides that we missed it could have been 10-7 even though we played very poorly. Our energy wasn’t what it usually was, so we managed to lift our energy a bit for second half and things take off from there.”

Dublin manager Dessie Farrell said his side just couldn’t get going after the restart to get the score they needed to keep the gap between themselves and Mayo.

“It was obvious we were very flat in the second half, we knew obviously Mayo and they had done it in the Connacht final they were going to come with a lot," Farrell said.

“I think just we found it very difficult to get out past their high press and we struggled to build any sort of momentum and a couple of mistakes, bad decisions maybe made and I thought at one stage if we could get a score or two, it might ease the pressure and we’d ride out the storm.

"We never could get that additional score that was going to put that safe distance between us and you could see it building then and it was very hard to disrupt their momentum that they generated significantly and got back into it and got the draw and won in extra time obviously.”

Mayo lost wing back Eoghan McLaughlin to an injury in the second half and Horan is awaiting to see how he is, hoping that it doesn’t add to their injury list that has seen Cillian O’Connor ruled out for the season and Oisin Mullin miss this contest.

"I know he’s injured and in a lot of discomfort, the medical team are with him and gone to the hospital.”

Speaking about how his side failed to hit the ground running in the second half and fire as well as they can in their previous matches, Farrell said that he would have liked his side to have had some more momentum going into the game.

“Obviously you would like to be coming in to this stage of the competition with a little bit more momentum and the collective team form better that it was, we showed glimpses of it here and there in good patches really good patches it was looking for that consistency that we were missing all year.

“The first half looked really good at times and the second half was the exact opposite of that, so it is hard to diagnose but I think, revolves around the lack of consistency across the quarters that was hurting us and it manifested again today.”