Niall Carew cut a relieved figure after Sligo avoided an upset in their Connacht SFC opener against New York.

The shock looked on when the Exiles hit the front for the first time with 19 minutes to go at Gaelic Park, but the Yeats County responded impressively to run out eight-point winners and set up a quarter-final meeting with Mayo in two weeks' time.

"It was pressure the whole time coming over here," the Sligo manager admitted to the RTÉ Sport GAA podcast.

"You don't want to be the first team to be beaten by New York. They talked themselves up very well all week. We were very wary coming into it. It was important to be professional."

Carew said Sligo needed to show patience to get the job done.

"We should have been up by more than two points at half time," he continued.

"We said that if we just keep probing more than looking for the killing pass in the rain and on that surface. We said that if we probed more and kept the ball in hand, the gaps would appear, and that's exactly what we did."

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