By Cian O'Connell

Despite suffering a Connacht FBD League Semi-Final defeat against Galway, Mayo manager James Horan was still encouraged by the performances of developing players in the green and red panel.

Mayo dominated the opening period, but weren't sufficiently clinical converting opportunities which ultimately allowed Galway back into the contest.

In the penalty shootout Galway stayed cool, but Horan was impressed with the displays of several promising Mayo footballers.

"We got something from the game, I thought we managed a lot of it fairly well," Horan remarked. "Conor Diskin’s first senior start for Mayo, he showed well and got two points. Fionn McDonagh, James McCormack, a lot of the new guys came though it and got a bit more experience in a close game against Galway so from that point of view it was good."

There were some encouraging signs initially for Mayo in the west. "Yeah, but the tempo of it was very low," Horan responded. "We had six scores (1-5) from 14 shots so that return isn’t good enough. We gave 35 balls away during the course of the game, and they’re the boring things that we’ll be looking at.

"We gave an awful lot of unforced errors away and that just kills you in a game like that. But there’s plenty for us to take from it, particularly some of the new guys were very good."

Mayo's next competitive outing is against Roscommon on January 26 in the opening round of the Allianz Football League at Elverys MacHale Park.

"It’s disappointing to lose any game, particularly when we were in that position," Horan added. "We’re two weeks away from the National League now and we need a game next weekend.

"It would have been nice to have been playing Roscommon next weekend, but we’ll play them in two weeks anyway. We’ll get a game for next weekend and prepare for the National League."