IT’S HARD TO keep a good man down. When Ballintubber needed somebody to step up for a late free to force the Mayo U21 football final into extra time, Cillian O’Connor was their man.

It didn’t matter that O’Connor had missed the senior county final, ruled out by the shoulder he dislocated shortly after Mayo’s agonising All-Ireland final defeat. Nor did it matter that he wasn’t fully fit.

In a brief cameo appearance as a substitute last November, the two-time Young Player of the Year scored 1-1 to deny Castlebar Mitchels and send the final to a replay. Ultimately it was all in vain; there were no super-sub heroics the second time around and Castlebar got the job done.

But now, nearly four months after his last competitive action, O’Connor is eyeing the last steps on the comeback trail.

“I am nearly back in full training now,” the forward revealed earlier this week. “Hopefully in the next week or two I will get back into full contact and full training with the squad and after that then I am going to try and get up to match speed.

“It could be two or three weeks before I get there. It is up to the medical team and the management what they decide.”

Tonight Mayo travel to Croke Park to take on a high-flying Dublin side in their own back yard. The game comes a little too soon for O’Connor, and for team-mate Andy Moran who has been sidelined since the summer with a knee injury, but he nonetheless expects a true test of Mayo’s credentials.

“It is a great game to get because they have obviously hit the ground running. It is a great opportunity for ourselves to test ourselves and see where we are at. It is an exciting game and from talking to the lads I know that they are looking forward to it.”

Even without himself and Moran to lead the line, he adds, there’s plenty of scoring potential at manager James Horan’s disposal. In their opening win against Kerry and the narrow defeat against Tyrone that followed, Mayo scored a total of 29 points, bettered only by Kildare (36) and Dublin (35).

“I know the within the panel that we have plenty of good forwards,” he says.

With me and Andy injured, people might point to that, but there is plenty of scoring forwards in the panel. There is Michael Conroy, Jason Doherty has been playing very well, and there is plenty more as well so we would not be reading too much into that.

It is up to ourselves to get our game right. From training we know that we have got plenty of lads who can score. It is just a matter of getting it out in games now.

Tonight marks their return to Headquarters for the first time since the agony of last September, another near All-Ireland miss to add to the county canon of pain. The memory still stings, O’Connor admits, but there’s no point in regret and recrimination. Instead Mayo need to use it to fuel the fire that will help them to go one better this time around.

“Finals are a results game. It is not really a moral victory that you are after. There is very little consolation that you can take from losing by a couple of points.

“It was hugely disappointing but the fact that we have been testing ourselves against the best teams the last couple of years and winning a lot of the games has given us confidence.

It is not something that you are going to really forget. It is always going to be with you, the disappointment of it, but it also gives you the motivation to go back training the following year and the drive to improve yourself as well. That’s the best way to use it: take the positives from it and just take lessons and better yourself.

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