Mayo manager James Horan suggested Mayo were 'rusty' following their below-par performance against Roscommon today.

The Connacht holders were lucky to come away from Dr Hyde Park with a one-point victory and, after the final whistle, Horan explained to RTE's The Sunday Game: "We were just rusty.

"It's a long time since we played, we had a game over in New York but it wasn't at the tempo and pace that Roscommon brought.

"We've had a lot of club activity and various bits and pieces that haven't helped us but now we'll make sure we will use everything we've got to be as focussed as we can on a Connacht SFC final."

Horan's Roscommon counterpart John Evans was proud of his players' efforts and said Mayo's greater experience won it for them in the end.

"We put immense emphasis on our tackling and getting it right and hence we were able to keep the score down," the Kerry native explained.

"I suppose we could have got a couple of more scores out of it but when you're defending hard, we were against the breeze in the first half, in the second half we opened it up a bit more and were quicker with the ball but Mayo had that experience.

"They just had that bit of guile that we didn't have. Absolutely no blame to our young lads, they got into the position but weren't able to pull the trigger." Tweet

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