Alan Freeman feels Mayo have developed a "hard edge" and are no longer seen as a soft touch by opposition.

Speaking in Croke Park yesterday ahead of Sunday's Allianz Football League final against Cork, the Aghamore clubman said: "At the moment, I think James (Horan) has added a harder edge to us. I think we hit hard in last year's championship.

"It's not new to the game. Every team is at it. We just have to adapt to it and bring that into our game. I think we're doing that well at the moment.

"You can have nice footballers and still have a hard edge as well. I think all the northern teams have the hard edge. Kerry and Cork as well, and we are developing that hard edge."

The highly-rated forward expressed satisfaction with Mayo's form to date this year.

"We started well and had a few good wins away from home. We had a bit of a slump in the middle. We worked harder, trained harder and worked out where things weren't working for us. We managed to get the results we needed near the end of the league and get into the semi-finals," he added. Tweet

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