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Mayo boss Kevin McStay is confident his team will deliver "a reaction" in their Connacht SFC opener against Sligo next week after they suffered defeat to Kerry in the Allianz Football League decider.

It was the Kingdom's day at Croke Park as they saw out a deserved 1-18 to 1-12 success in front of a crowd of 21,596.

McStay admitted the Green and Red failed to really build up a head of steam at any point, even after Eoghan McLaughlin's goal and a Ryan O'Donoghue two-pointer trimmed the deficit to three points.

However he was keen to take the positives from a tough contest.

"A goal was going to change it, and we thought give us some momentum," he told RTÉ Sport. "We got that. We got it back to three at one stage and now it was game on, but we just couldn't build on it and that is the disappointing bit.

"But the energy levels were still good, the effort throughout was still very good by our lads, but we know we've a bit of work on this week to get ready for the Connacht championship.

"There was a couple of big plays there that we didn't just pull off, Kerry did. To our eternal credit we kept at it, we knew the game was slipping but there was a lot of energy, down to the very last play we were still trying to do the right thing.

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"It just didn't happen for us today on a number of fronts."

McStay was reasonably relaxed about the injury that forced Colm Reape out of the action with 54 minutes played.

"It's a little bit of a worry but I don't think it's a major worry," he said. "Obviously I'll