Mayo U21 manager Niall Heffernan has expressed his frustration at being denied access to three senior players for Saturday's Hastings Cup semi-final defeat to Roscommon.

Stephen Coen, Patrick Durcan and Adam Gallagher weren't released by the senior management for the game in Lanesboro, Co. Longford, which Roscommon won on a 1-10 to 1-6 scoreline.

"We need to have time with the players and we need to get the panel together," Heffernan told the Western People.

"This week we weren't allowed have our senior players and we weren't allowed have three of them again this weekend and that's hard. If you really want to take U21 football seriously and you really want to push it on, then we have to be given our senior players.

"We're less than seven weeks away from championship and we need to have our senior players with us so that we can build a bit of understanding."

He added: "I made no secret of the fact that I looked for the senior players for today's match. I pushed hard all week to get them, but I didn't get them.

"It's vital that we're given every opportunity to do as well as we can possibly do and last weekend Roscommon had their players available to them the day before they played Mayo in an FBD game.

"It'd be lovely for us to have all our players available - it doesn't mean we have to play them all, but it'd be great to have that choice."

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