Mayo's man-of-the-match Padraig O'Hora described his side's thrilling extra-time victory over Dublin as “the best day of my life”.

After being outplayed in the first-half, and trailing by six-points at the interval, James Horan's men showed incredible resolve to conjure a late comeback before seeing off the All-Ireland champions with four unaswered points in extra-time.

Amidst the wild celebrations that followed the final whistle, O'Hora, who played an influential role as Mayo ended a nine-year wait to beat the Dubs, summed up the emotions of the occasion.

“It’s impossible to put it into words,” O’Hora said when speaking to RTÉ afterwards. “Look at this place. What it means to all of us. I can’t even describe it, unbelievable. It’s the best day of my life. 

“We love a battle. We always seem to put ourselves at the bottom of the hill before we go climbing it. We knew what we needed to do. We put in the work all year. It’s an outrageous squad. Everybody put in a shift and we turned them over like we planned to.”

The Ballina Stephenites clubman put the All-Ireland semi-final win down to a squad effort. 

“We’ve got a squad of outrageous players that put in the hard work week in week out that you don’t see, so when Oisín [Mullin] got hurt, somebody else stepped up and that’s what it’s all about. This is a unit, it’s not a group of individuals, it’s a team.”

Tweet

Most Read Stories