MAYO MANAGER JAMES Horan says he is unsure about his future in charge of the county after yesterday’s All-Ireland final loss to Dublin at Croke Park.
The Heather County boss was understandably gutted with the one-point defeat, but refused to be drawn on whether or not he will be back for another tilt next season.
“Ah, I haven’t a clue. I haven’t a clue at this stage. We’ll go away and think about it.”
That said, Horan did react with sharp wit when a Mayo-based journalist asked about his term with the county being up.
“I got a two-year extension last year, I thought you’d know that. Mayo reporter, for feck’s sake!”
While Horan was unwilling to give a definitive indication as to his own future, he remains confident that his players will recover from yesterday’s hurt and return for another strong effort at the All-Ireland.
“They’re disappointed but there’s serious calibre in those guys. They’re made of the right stuff so they’ll dust themselves down and go again, there’s no doubt about it.”
It is encouraging to hear Horan’s confidence in that regard, but he says the squad must learn from this defeat, highlighting the need to analyse what went wrong, as is done after every game.
“It’s tough, two All-Ireland finals in a row is tough. Some of the mistakes we made today were disappointing. That game was there for the taking for us but we just didn’t take the chances. We just have to look at it again. Like we’ve always told them, we’ll look at it like we do after every game. We are making improvements. There’s no doubt about that. But we just didn’t get over the line today.”
That process will take time but Horan’s immediate reaction to the game was one of regret, particularly at his team’s inability to convert what he saw as dominance early on. Poor choices in the second half were also highlighted as decisive.
“We had enough ball to win the game. We just made too many mistakes and had too many turnovers. I think it’s that straightforward. We dominated the first 15 minutes but we didn’t get the score return we possibly should have.
“We had too many wides. It was closer at half-time than it should have been. In the second-half, when we were attacking, we just made some poor decisions at times and it eventually cost us.”
Mayo’s failure to score a point from open play in the second period has been pin pointed as one of the reasons they came away from Croke Park without Sam, and Horan admitted it had cost them.
“We won a lot of frees in the second-half, if you look at it that way. Yeah, we didn’t get the return from play that we should have. That’s something that we’ll look at. That game could have gone either way in the end. We just didn’t get there.”
Pushed to criticize the refereeing at the end of the game, the Mayo manager was philosophical in reply, stating that he can do little about it now.
“When you ask the ref how long is left, when you ask him twice, you know… He tells you there’s at least 30 seconds left after the score. That’s a little disappointing. But, look, that’s neither here nor there. The game is over, we were beaten so, yeah, we’re very disappointed.
“Sure you guys can write about that. There was a lot of hulabaloo when we played them before but we won’t make a hulaballo about it. It’s disappointing, is there anything I can do about it? Not a friggin’ thing. It’s pointless.”
