Mayo manager James Horan and Kerry manager Jack O'Connor shake hands after the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Quarter-Final match between Kerry and Mayo at Croke Park, Dublin.
By John Harrington
Mayo manager, James Horan, felt some poor shooting cost his team in today’s All-Ireland SFC quarter-final defeat to Kerry.
The Connacht side only converted 10 of 27 scoring chances from play, and in the final reckoning that profligacy proved fatal against a more clinical Kerry.
“I think we got four from 16 shots in the second half,” said Horan. “I think we'd piles of attacks today, we'd an awful lot of attacks, we just didn't get the return from the possession that we had.
“I think that's it and they certainly did, so that was the difference. I think we'd a couple into the goalies hands at a key time. I think that knocked us a little bit and gave them strength. That was where they got ahead into a comfortable lead and they managed it from there.
“We were probably missing our three highest scorers today that certainly makes a difference in Tommy (Conroy), Ryan (O’Donoghue) and Darren McHale is our highest returns scorer.”
Horan has now completed as second four-year term as Mayo manager and has yet to make a decision on whether or not he wants to continue in the position next year.
“There is no real looking forward now, we just had a chat in there, it’s never a time to make rash promises or decisions or statements after the end of a season like that, so everybody will take a bit of time,” he said.
“It has been a tough year. I was just saying out there that if you were designing a year it would be the absolute inverse of what we had, from no pitches to play league matches, no training pitches to no trainings, we had to cancel trainings, the amount of injuries.
“It was one of those raggle-taggle kind of seasons but to the credit of the players they kept going and kept battling. We were down a lot of games and it would be very easy just for you to call it a night but they didn’t, they kept going, so huge credit to the lads involved.
“We were always battling but that is part of it. We didn’t get the breaks for sure but that’s not a road worth any good for anyone to be going down that.
“Today we were in that game for a long time, ran out of juice maybe in the end but still thought we were in with a good shout there but look it’s ended with disappointment for us.”
