A tough one for Mayo.
Cavan defeated Mayo at MacHale Park this afternoon, 1-17 to 1-14, in their opening game of the All-Ireland round robin stage.
It puts Mayo in a perilous position already, as Cavan would have been considered the weakest team in a group that also includes Tyrone and Ulster champions Donegal.
Thankfully for the Connacht finalists, it is relatively easy to qualify for the preliminary quarter-finals, with the top three from each group going through.
But this seemed like little consolation for Mayo supporters, who are not pleased with boss Kevin McStay, just two weeks after losing the Connacht decider to a depleted Galway side.
Following that loss to Galway in Castlebar, McStay remained upbeat.
He said: “Unless I believe in what we are doing, I can hardly sell that to the players, but I don’t have to because I know they will react.
“But they are so sore now and disappointed and it is a tough dressing room right now.
“We have only ourselves to blame about how this is, we got into a position to win it, we didn’t win it and we need to reflect on that now, to see can we improve.”
“We need to improve fairly quickly at seeing out these games.
“I thought we had in the league, we had seen out a few of the tight ones, but it just didn’t quite transpire for us, even though like, Galway have the cup now, we had one shot to draw it.
“That is how close this bloody thing is, but close is no good.
“We had three of them last year if you remember, big matches and we didn’t see them out and here’s the first one of this season again now that we feel we’ve left it behind, but I know Galway will argue otherwise.
“I mean they had a big part to play in the second half too. But yeah it’s a sore one, I won’t shy away from that, we put an awful lot into this, this was a date in the diary 12 months ago, whenever the draw was made we thought this was a day we could get back.”
