'No excuses' for Tyrone in Mayo loss - O'Rourke

Yahoo

a day ago

Tyrone manager Malachy O'Rourke felt his side did not "get to the pitch of the game" in their 2-17 to 1-13 defeat by Mayo.
Coming into the All-Ireland round-robin contest off an impressive win over Ulster champions Donegal seven days prior, the Red Hands found themselves 1-9 to 0-4 down at half-time.
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Although they would cut the deficit to a point in the second half, Mayo, under the charge of Stephen Rochford after Kevin McStay stepped away for health reasons, pulled away to bounce back from their opening-round loss to Cavan.
"We'd a great win last week and we came here knowing, after the disappointment of the Cavan game, Mayo would be coming here with real hunger," said O'Rourke.
"We knew we'd have to meet that head on and I suppose that's the most disappointing thing, we felt in the first half we didn't get to the pitch of the game.
"We were a bit flat and left ourselves with a lot to do. In fairness to the boys, we dug in well, we got it back to a point but we made too many mistakes, we weren't playing well enough and Mayo deserved the victory. We've no excuses."
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While Tyrone were in action on consecutive weekends, Mayo had a week's break from their last outing, although O'Rourke did not feel that was the telling reason for his side's flat performance.
"There's no doubt that the week turnaround is very small and it could have some effect, but we're not using that as an excuse either," he added.
"We knew what the story was, we knew exactly what Mayo would bring and we were hoping we'd be able to meet that and get another really good performance.
"For all of us in the changing room, we didn't get to the level that we need to get to and the level we expect of ourselves."
Tyrone will conclude their round-robin action against Cavan at a neutral venue during the weekend of 14/15 June.