Heavy legged Mayo could benefit from long break

The opening weekend of the Connacht championship gave us two major results, although I don't think you could call either of them shocks.

Watching Sunday's game from the studio in MacHale Park, I remarked at an early stage that the whole thing felt like a replica of 2019. When Roscommon grabbed those two early goals, you had a nagging sense that Mayo would get close eventually but wouldn't have enough to get over the line.

Anytime Mayo got to within a point, they would get turned over or Roscommon would find a way to manufacture a score. In truth, Roscommon looked pretty comfortable down the home stretch, which might be the biggest disappointment of all for Kevin McStay and his backroom team.

What was a shock was Mayo's flatness. Some of that is attributable to Roscommon's aggression but Mayo themselves looked fairly heavy-legged. They didn't bring the same energy they'd shown throughout the league.

They started the game at a hundred miles an hour, which was probably the wrong approach for the day that was in it. By the end, you felt that they had run out of gears and run out of ideas. Once they couldn't break through the Rossie defence at a quick pace, they got bogged down and bottled up.

Roscommon came with an intensity and an insane work ethic that Mayo couldn't match. We have long associated Mayo with a high-octane game, but it was Roscommon who brought that on Sunday.

Added to that intensity was the quality of Diarmuid Murtagh and Enda Smith in attack, even if Smith was asked to perform a more defensively-minded and workmanlike role than usual. He did a huge amount of tracking and tackling around the middle but was still able to pop up with a crucial score late on. And the two points Murtagh kicked in the closing stages,