Andy Moran was surprisingly upbeat after losing his third Allianz Football League final to Cork on Sunday.

The newly-appointed Mayo captain insisted his side could take a lot of positives from the campaign, despite losing another major final at Croke Park.

"It was a good league. We wanted to get to the semi-finals, we ended up getting to the final. We wanted to win it, it ended up that we didn't, but have we made progress? Definitely. Were Cork the better team today? I would say so, yes. I think they deserved their win," he told The Mayo News.

"No matter what anyone says to us, the papers will write tomorrow and do their thing but we'd a great league and we've seven or eight players extra from last year and we'll move forward and we'll have Aidan (O'Shea) back as well (for the championship) which will make a huge difference to it. We believe we're a good team and we'll move forward and go again."

Moran conceded that Cork won the physical battle.

"Yeah, Cork really wanted it there. Their physical stakes really paved the way for them to win the game and probably opened us up a tiny bit. It is something that we need to learn, we need to get a bit stronger.

"I think Donie (Vaughan) was targeted slightly in the game and the incident before half-time probably didn't help us as well, the incident with Donie. But, listen, the first ten minutes of the second half killed us, it's as simple as that. They came out after half-time and blitzed us." Tweet

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