Mayo boss Andy Moran sees the midfield battle as being key in his side’s All-Ireland SFC semi-final meeting with Louth this weekend.

The Westerners scored an impressive win over Cork last time out at Croke Park, where their full-forward line combined for 0-19 over the 70 minutes, and now face a Louth side lining out in the last four of the Sam Maguire Cup race for the first time since 1957 – the same year they lifted the famous trophy.

Speaking to RTE Sport, Moran says that the Wee County’s having been living up to their potential this summer.

"I think they're fulfilling the potential that they had there for a long time," he said of Gavin Devlin’s team. "They've put great structures in place around their centre of excellence, their underage and there's a good population there in Louth. I think they're really just fulfilling their potential.

"We're trying to concentrate on ourselves but you can't take away from the fact that Louth have done brilliant over the last couple of weeks as well.

"They have a really strong bench, but we think we have as well. We think we have good players that we need to make sure that we're not just concentrating too much on Louth, that we need to concentrate on how we want to play the game and how progressive we want to be with it as well in terms of our kick-out and our forward play.

"Yes, you have to worry about the opposition all the time but you have to make sure that you have the best plan in place for your players as well. You just need to be able to compete and win that midfield battle if you're going to win the game.

"Whoever wins that fight around the breaking ball around midfield is going to be successful."

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