JAMES HORAN SAYS he and his management team will analyse Mayo’s heartbreaking one-point All-Ireland final defeat to Dublin ‘in the cold light of day’.
But his snap judgement after the final whistle this afternoon at Croke Park was that simple errors cost the Connacht champions a famous win.
“We had enough ball to win the game, we just made too many basic mistakes,” Horan told RTÉ’s Joanne Cantwell.
“We turned over the ball too often, the ball wouldn’t stick inside for us and Dublin were launching counter attacks. That was basically it, nothing more. A few mistakes let us down and in the second half Dublin came with a surge and got ahead and we were chasing then.
“Our composure just left us a little bit but we kept plugging away and kept trying as hard as a we could. We just couldn’t get there.
“Sometimes our hand passing let us down a little bit, some of the basics that you need to do right, we were in good positions and just gave away the ball a little bit. So that’s a killer in an All-Ireland final but we kept trying and we kept working as hard as we could. I’m very proud of the guys and all the work they put in but it’s just very disappointing. It’s a game we were right in but just couldn’t get the scores.”
Asked if the nature of the loss will rankle with him, he added: “Dublin won deservedly today. We’ll look at what went wrong and what we can do better and it’s fairly obvious I suppose from the type of game like that but we’ll look at it in the cold light of day and see where we are.”
Once again, Mayo fans face into a long winter in which they’ll reflect on another defeat in the Sam Maguire decider. Will Horan return to again try to end the wait for the famous trophy?
“Look it we’ll go away and we’ll think about it for a while,” he said.
Thank you for everything this year James and the team
And well done Dublin
On the road home to Mayo & I just want to say that the soccer style chanting and behavior of some of the dublin “fans” today was a disgrace. Thank god I only have to visit this city a few times a year.
Get over it, ur just bitter. If you dont like it stay at home.
G’wan the anti dub!!
Just want to say that when Dublin scored the second goal and mayo fan through their hard edged programme full force into a Dublin fans head in the Hogan Stand, that was pure hooligan behaviour, but that’s ok because you only notice the behaviour of Dub fans. Really annoys me, Dub fans are amazing and stupid comments like this do nothing for Mayo.
Cynical fouling near the end is horrible. Dubs fans in hill were always like that , crude n vulgar (not all of em)
Get over it most of the real dublin fans couldn’t get tickets. We were the better team at the end of the day not by much tho. Hard luck Mayo it cud have went either way.
I think James horan has to have a good look at himself as I think he was clueless tactically yesterday.He did nothing about his AWOL midfield, and with 10 minutes to go Dublin had used all their subs up and Carroll was concussed, he might as well not have been there and still Horan was slow to react.In th dying seconds he gave no clear instruction as to whether to go for a goal or a point when he was asked what to do.Mayo had no forwards and maybe Aidan o Shea should have gone in on the square to freshen it up.And I wonder what a certain Conor Mortimor would have thought of the whole thing yesterday.He couldn’t have done any worst than the mayo forwards yesterday.At least Lee Keegan had a go n hes not a forward.Mayo choked on the sideline as well as on the pitch!