'We're facing our biggest challenge as a group' - Aidan O'Shea

SATURDAY NIGHT WAS a unique occasion for Aidan O’Shea.

For the first time in an inter-county career stretching across minor, U21 and senior, the Breaffy man found himself on the losing side against Galway.

This experienced group of players have been to hell and back together. They suffered the pain of defeat in the 2012 and 2013 All-Ireland finals, and have fallen short at the penultimate stage in each of the last two seasons.

O’Shea didn’t downplay the magnitude of losing to Galway when declaring, “I think from a player point of view, yeah, definitely it’s our biggest challenge.”

Considering all those harrowing defeats and near misses, it’s pretty significant that the two-time Allstar feels a first defeat in Connacht since 2010 represents their greatest challenge as a group.

There’s no real way to quantify whether or not that’s true, but one thing is certain: Mayo are feeling the heat as they head into the qualifiers. The good news is they have a chance to put things right.

“Previously we’ve lost in August or September and had to wait nine months or longer, even 12 months, to get back to where we had been the previous year.

“We’ve a three-week window now to try to get ourselves back playing good football and enjoying our football again and get a win and get a bit of momentum. Because, yeah, it’s a big challenge, and if we don’t rise to it it could be a short summer.”

How well Mayo react in the qualifiers could well define this team. Inevitably, it’s argued they put a target on their backs after ousting the previous management last year.

“It’s obviously going to come up. It’s not something I can control or the team can control. We parked that a long time ago. It’s not something we’re too worried about.

“What we are worried about is we’re after losing a type of game that we haven’t lost for a long, long time. That hurts. We need to rectify it very quickly.”

He’s right about that. In three weeks’ time Mayo will begin their journey through the backdoor. In their last venture into the qualifiers, in 2010, they were stunned by Longford in the first-round. In both 2008 and 2009, Tyrone and Kerry built up momentum through the qualifiers and annexed an All-Ireland title. So it’s not all doom and gloom.

“When we were winning Connacht titles everyone was saying, ‘would you not be as well off going through the back door because you’re not getting much of a challenge?’

“Look, I’d prefer to have won the Connacht championship if I’m being frank but we haven’t. From a game point of view, we’ve got the game in three weeks. We don’t know who it is against at this moment in time and we’re not going to look any further past that.

“The summer has started. We’re going to have a couple of games in a row hopefully to get ourselves and if we can get a performance in that game I don’t know where it’s going to take us. It’s very hard to say whether it’s a benefit or not.

“But it’s not a benefit if we wallow in this loss and arrive at the game in three weeks’ time still back in MacHale Park last Saturday, we need to cut it now and get ready for that game.”

Nobody saw the defeat to Galway coming. Nothing about Mayo’s preparation suggested there was any complacency in the camp, according to O’Shea. But it didn’t help that former manager James Horan suggested in the build-up to the game that avoiding a double-digit defeat would be a good result for Galway.

“To be honest, I was very busy at work last week. I didn’t see a paper. I knew James had written an article about how the gap was widening. We didn’t prove any gap was widening on Saturday night, whether there is or isn’t.

“It’s been said for the last five years. I wouldn’t use it was an excuse. We’ve had to deal with that coming in to every Connacht championship, that the competition hasn’t been hectic, that the gap is widening, blah, blah, blah. What we’ve ultimately done is win the games, brought home the Connacht championship. And we haven’t done it this year.

“There was loose talk obviously last week. Galway were very, very quiet. But that’s not an excuse. Our preparation levels should have been good enough to win the game and they weren’t.”

Aidan O’Shea was speaking at the launch of Kellogg’s Powering Play nutrition programme.

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