NEW YORK WILL be ready for battle when Mayo arrive in the Big Apple this weekend.
The Exiles — who haven’t won a game since entering the Connacht Championship in 1999 — take on last year’s All-Ireland runners-up in Gaelic Park this Sunday.
To get his players in the right frame of mind, manager Ian Galvin led a team-building exercise to West Point, home of the United States Military Academy and the Army american football team.
“We had a nice trip to West Point on Saturday and saw the professional level they have out there at college level,” Galvin said on Monday.
“Obviously it would be army so there’s a lot of discipline, and we like to instil a bit of discipline in our guys as well.”
He added: “Getting away and getting a bit of training done together, we had a team meeting on Saturday night. Getting all the guys together for one weekend is hard.
It was an honour to go to West Point and it is something that we would love to do moving forward again. Hopefully it will become an annual event.
New York are desperate to improve on the 24-point losses they shipped against Sligo and Leitrim in the last two seasons.
Galvin, who took charge last November, can call on a number of player with championship experience this time around including team captain Brendan Quigley (ex-Laois) and Ross Wherity (ex-Donegal).
“In fairness to the management that came before they probably didn’t have the quality of player that we might have now,” he said.
“There has been a massive turnover of players in the last year. It makes a big difference.
Of course I can say we don’t want to be the whipping boys anymore. We don’t want to be laughed at. We don’t want this to be an exhibition game.
“But we’re under the kosh, it’s going to be hard. We’re going to deliver our performance to the max and the rest will take care of itself from there.”
