JAMES HORAN SAYS he and his management team will analyse Mayo’s heartbreaking one-point All-Ireland final defeat to Dublin ‘in the cold light of day’.

But his snap judgement after the final whistle this afternoon at Croke Park was that simple errors cost the Connacht champions a famous win.

“We had enough ball to win the game, we just made too many basic mistakes,” Horan told RTÉ’s Joanne Cantwell.

“We turned over the ball too often, the ball wouldn’t stick inside for us and Dublin were launching counter attacks. That was basically it, nothing more. A few mistakes let us down and in the second half Dublin came with a surge and got ahead and we were chasing then.

“Our composure just left us a little bit but we kept plugging away and kept trying as hard as a we could. We just couldn’t get there.

“Sometimes our hand passing let us down a little bit, some of the basics that you need to do right, we were in good positions and just gave away the ball a little bit. So that’s a killer in an All-Ireland final but we kept trying and we kept working as hard as we could. I’m very proud of the guys and all the work they put in but it’s just very disappointing. It’s a game we were right in but just couldn’t get the scores.”

Asked if the nature of the loss will rankle with him, he added: “Dublin won deservedly today. We’ll look at what went wrong and what we can do better and it’s fairly obvious I suppose from the type of game like that but we’ll look at it in the cold light of day and see where we are.”

Once again, Mayo fans face into a long winter in which they’ll reflect on another defeat in the Sam Maguire decider. Will Horan return to again try to end the wait for the famous trophy?

“Look it we’ll go away and we’ll think about it for a while,” he said.

In pics: Dublin are All-Ireland football champions again