Kevin McStay acknowledged it wasn't "vintage Mayo" in their three-point win over Sligo at MacHale Park but was delighted with the result in the wake of a grueling Division 1 campaign.
A week after their league final defeat to Kerry, Mayo avoided falling into the trap of two years ago but had to weather a late push from a competitive Sligo outfit.
With goals in either half from Ryan O'Donoghue and an influential Aidan O'Shea, Mayo held Sligo at arm's length for most of the contest, with Darren McHale and Fergal Boland both scoring freely.
However, Sligo, who found the net twice in the second half through Luke Towey and Cian Lally, whittled down a seven point lead to three in the final couple of minutes, after landing the only two-pointers of the game from Alan McLoughlin and Niall Murphy, the second of which was wrongly awarded, given that Murphy was clearly inside the arc.
O'Shea won the resultant kickout and Mayo saw out the final few seconds in possession to book their semi-final spot against Leitrim.
"We've been on the road a fair bit in the last few weeks," McStay told RTÉ Sunday Sport. "We were involved in a fairly high profile game last week.
"So, we were a little bit anxious about what our performance levels might be.
"Absolutely delighted with the result. It wasn't vintage Mayo but it gives us the opportunity to continue work and drive it on for the semi-final.
"I wouldn't say it was a hangover. But the league is a fair old trot. We did four weekends in a row, two of them pretty long journeys to Derry and Croke Park. And we stayed overnights and so on. Trying to get that out of the system is important.
"Sligo were very game and gave us plenty of it. But we responded well and kept our noses in front.
"We left a few goals behind us so we could have padded that lead (out) to anything. Ten different scorers is really good. Six debutants is really good and they acquitted themselves quite well. They're positives but in an overall sense, there's a lorry-load of work to be done.
"Aidan was really good and very strong. That last ball that needed to be won, he went in and won it. We were able to play down the clock and he took any heart attacks away with that play."
Mayo face a Leitrim side at a low ebb in the semi-final, with the likelihood of Galway or Roscommon coming in the Connacht decider afterwards.
McStay, appointed at the end of 2022, is seeking his first provincial crown as Mayo manager, having witnessed Galway claim three-in-a-row for the first time since the 1980s last summer.
"Our total focus is on getting back to work, getting ready for the next match, and keeping the improvement for this championship. We are mad to win this championship. So, that's what we're going after.
"We have huge capacity in the team. We're seeing it in training. Some of the things we saw out on the pitch today, I hadn't seen them in training. But they're a great bunch of fellas and they're training very hard.
"You could see that the defeat last week knocked a little bit of their confidence. But we'll get over that. We have our sights firmly set on going after this championship."
For Sligo boss Tony McEntee, any disappointment at falling short was tempered by pride in the performance.
Without a win in MacHale Park since their 1975 Connacht final win, Sligo trailed by nine points at one stage in the second half but rallied in the closing stages, a push sparked by Lally's superb individual goal.
"It's a mixture here because we came here looking for a result and a win," McEntee told RTÉ Sport's Adrian Eames. "And we put in a performance that was superb for us. We took a Division 1 team to three points.
"I have a lot of disappointments because we had chances, we had opportunities and we performed. And it's very hard to perform here in Castlebar against such a good team.
"But once I shake that off, I have immense pride in the team. Because today we showed we have more in our locker. If we continue to grow and develop, we should make progress in the Tailteann Cup.
"This team and former Sligo teams under my own management may have given up and lost by 20 points. We played Mayo, by the way, five years ago in my first year and got annihilated.
"So to stick in and get back in this game and make it a fight right until the end has shown real development and I'm pleased with that."
