Mayo advance in qualifiers but Monaghan left frustrated

Monaghan manager Seamus McEnaney left nobody in any doubt about his feelings after Saturday's Qualifier defeat at the hands of Mayo in Castlebar.

"I’m not going to sugar-coat things here. We are absolutely very disappointed. We think it was a stonewall penalty there at the end. We were robbed of a penalty, we were robbed of extra time, we were robbed of another opportunity. There’s no grey area.

"The Mayo penalty was touch and go. I’m 20 years managing teams and 15 years managing Monaghan, off and on, and never in my lifetime did I complain about a referee in my lifetime, but today was disgraceful.

"These were huge margins. We can manage, we can build a backroom team, we can get the best players in Monaghan to play football but we cannot legislate for that type of stuff."

McEnaney’s frustration revolved around some of the calls made and not made by referee Barry Cassidy at each end of a hard-fought, dour battle in the sunshine. Of course, Mayo had no such qualms as they set of on yet another adventure through the Qualifiers – was that ever in doubt?

The guests will wonder had they somehow insulted Lady Luck or even smashed a few mirrors on their trip west, such was their misfortune in the opening quarter. First Conor McManus was black-carded for what seemed like an innocuous foul on Aidan O’Shea and minutes later, the home side were awarded a penalty when Ryan Wylie blocked Oisin Mullin’s goal effort with his foot.

Both calls were probably correct, but that did little to sate the anger of the large Monaghan following in the crowd.

However, worse was to come for the Monaghan men in injury time at the end of the game. Trailing by three points, chaos ensued in the Mayo goalmouth, Conor Leonard went to ground and a penalty seemed