All-Ireland Senior Football Championship semi-final: Mayo 2-13 Tipperary 0-14
WHAT Mayo produced yesterday won’t be enough to end the county’s long wait for the Sam Maguire says Seamus O’Shea.
The burly midfielder sees plenty of room for improvement after the Westerners survived a determined second half comeback from Tipperary to win by five points and reach the All-Ireland final for the first time since 2013. In the past two seasons Mayo have lost thrilling last-four replays to Kerry and Dublin and they’ll meet the winner of their semi-final clash in four weeks’ time.
After yesterday’s engrossing battle Tipp manager Liam Kearns said Mayo had work to do to win the final and Breaffy midfielder O’Shea agreed.
“He’s probably right,” he said. “It’s Dublin or Kerry and they’re both top teams and we’re going to have to play very well to beat them.
“But we’ve four weeks to get ready and we have a nice break now – we’ve played a lot of games in the last six or seven weeks so it’s important we rest this week.
“We lost to Dublin last year, we lost to Kerry the year before, so we’ll let them play it out and see what happens and prepare accordingly,” he said.
O’Shea – whose brothers Aidan and Conor also played vital roles in Mayo’s win – was withdrawn with a knee injury yesterday which was heavily strapped as he made his way to the team bus. He says he’ll be fit for the final and welcomes the extra week of rest – Mayo have four weeks to prepare for the decider, while Dublin or Kerry will have three.
“The extra week is probably no harm,” he said. “We’re in a routine of playing games the last six or seven weeks but that’s a lot of mileage that we have on the clock and it’s probably no harm that we can let fellas recover before the final.”
Tipperary opened up a 0-6 to 0-3 lead after 15 minutes yesterday but O’Shea and Donal Vaughan took control in midfield and helped Mayo take a 1-10 to 0-7 lead in at the break. However, the unfancied Munster men rallied in the second half and closed the gap to two points before Mayo scored their second goal through O’Shea’s younger brother Conor.
“He did well - Andy (Moran) is calling him Davor Suker,” he said with a laugh. “It was a crucial score for us and I’m delighted for him.”
Without that goal, the outcome could have been different because Mayo had lost their way and Tipperary’s skilful forwards were causing their defence a lot of problems. “We are playing well in patches,” said O’Shea.
“We put 10 or 15 minutes together here and there and run up a big score and then we seem to drift off and fall asleep at times and let teams back into it.
“We did that against Westmeath as well, we were on top and then for about 10 or 15 minutes after half-time for some reason we fell asleep and we did the same thing again today.
“It was disappointing but you have to have to hand it to them as well, they played well for that period and we were a bit slow to react and come to terms with it.
“We’re always striving to get that 70-minute performance but it’s something to work on ahead of the final.” Division Three outfit Tipperary have taken some notable scalps this year and gave a good account of themselves in their first AllIreland semi-final since 1935.
“They’re a serious team,” said O’Shea. “I played with Brian Fox and Philly Austin at college and they likes of (Conor) Sweeney and (Michael) Quinlivan inside are serious ’ballers.
“It was probably similar to us in 2011 – we came up against Kerry that day and we fell a little bit short but we’ve been here every year since. “There’s no reason they can’t continue to compete at this level because they have a lot of good footballers.”
