Stephen Rochford was grateful to Ballina Stephenites for hosting yesterday's FBD Connacht League game between Mayo and Sligo at short notice.

The game was originally fixed for Enniscrone, but the pitch there was deemed unplayable yesterday morning.

"The last week has been difficult even getting football training into the lads with the weather," the Mayo manager told RTÉ.

"It's snow one day and it's raining the next. So it was important to get here and be able to play a game. On that point Ballina Stephenites did a great job in being able to turn around their pitch in such a short time and be able to host the game."

Mayo welcomed back a host of familiar faces after they had missed the early rounds due to the team holiday in Malaysia.

"We have a lot to do, it's good to get the game into us, but we are lacking the cutting sharpness that we would like to have. It's understandable we haven't a lot done especially the senior players, that's their first competitive game in a good few months.

"The next three weeks will certainly ask questions of us and we will know a lot more about ourselves this day next week."

He added: "Division 1 is such a challenging group and we are under a bit of pressure, we are missing maybe six or seven front-liners from the All-Ireland final, if you were take that as a benchmark for next week.

"We don't have a lot of game time played and training has been hampered, we are taking it a game at a time and trying to accumulate the points."

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