Stephen Rochford was already looking ahead to Mayo’s final All-Ireland SFC round-robin encounter with Donegal after saving their season with a big win over Tyrone.

The Westerners put a shock opening round defeat to Cavan and the loss of manager Kevin McStay due to health reasons behind them with a defiant display, after which their interim boss admitted that they needed to come out fighting.

"Absolutely. But there's no point being wounded or feeling the pain if you don't respond. We were just so, so disappointed in ourselves the last day,” he said in an interview with RTÉ.

"But we're also working to a point at which we believe that that game (against Tyrone) is more what we're at.

"We've had parts of that in the National League. We showed some of it in the Connacht final. But the challenge for us now is to deliver that level of consistency.

"All bets are off now. We've seen over the last two seasons that those final games can go either way.

"We can't entertain anything but getting some sort of a result against Donegal. But the work has to go in over the next two weeks in order to do that."

Tweet

Most Read Stories