Mayo's strength and conditioning coach Ed Coughlan says the Connacht champions have an insatiable "raw hunger" for hard work.

On the Wednesday night after James Horan's charges had defeated Cork in their All-Ireland SFC quarter-final, the players were queueing up for extra drills.

"We did a training session three days after that Cork game, and by the time Donie [Buckley] called the end of the session, and the cool-down was done and walking off the field, nine players had come up to me to ask me 'is there more I can do?'," the Cork man tells The Irish Independent.

"Nine, and another five or six in the dressing-room. You can't buy that, that's just a hunger, a raw hunger that these guys have. They're just enjoying that ride.

"These guys are operating at a level where they have total belief in the process; they have, from day one, bought into a vision of what James set out to me. If you buy into that, well then you're a like-minded person.

"We've got that many people, 30-odd players, 15 or 16 back-room team, all going in the same direction, all following the same goal with the same vision and I think that's a powerful place to be in.

"It's a real enjoyable place to be in, it's an exciting environment to be in and it's driven by 30-odd lunatics on the field every week who just go to the max and they love it, they thrive." Tweet

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