JAMES HORAN WASN’T fishing for excuses after his Mayo side failed to defeat 14 men again in Croke Park yesterday.
Derry overcame the opening-half dismissal of Fergal Doherty to come from behind to defeat Mayo and reach the Division 1 football league final.
Horan lamented his side’s work-rate and tackling as they squandered a winning position.
“We went three points up and had a good goal chance but made a hames of it. We didn’t take it and the longer that game went on the more Derry would have won it by. They were starting to run through us and run away from us.
“It’s a very disappointing performance from us and one we’ll have to analyse very seriously, the whole lot of us as a group, because we weren’t good today, right through. “We need to have a look at everything in depth going forward.
“Our tackling was poor. The second goal we gave away today, at any age group or any game you’d be very disappointed with it. For a goal to go in like that, there is more wrong than someone missing a tackle.”
“What’s that now? 15 goals? It’s a big problem for us and when we’re getting a bit of momentum in games we’re conceding very soft goals and confidence takes a bit of a hit and we’re losing games like that today.
“Our work-rate and preparation must have been a little bit off today because we were flat in a number of things so we need to have a serious review. When we didn’t need it, we had three or four guys behind the ball who were not influencing play.”
Horan refused to put their below-par display down to heavy training.
“We’re training heavy but we looked flat today. It’s not training that would have players that flat. Maybe our prep was off. We need to correct this and quickly but we will.
“Derry were very good. They came very strong at the end and if they’d kept going they would have pulled away by more. The best of luck to them it’s good to see a team coming through like that. They’re young and hungry and absolutely deserved the win.”
Mayo lost defender Ger Cafferkey with a quad injury during the game but in better news, Horan confirmed that Cillian O’Connor should return to training this week while Alan Dillon was back playing club football with Ballintubber at the weekend.
