Mayo manager Stephen Rochford says that the upset of last year’s All-Ireland final replay defeat to Dublin is well behind him, though he hopes he has learned from the experience.
In his first year as Mayo boss he took the Green Above the Red to within a kick of a ball of winning Sam Maguire for the first time since 1951 after 140 minutes of football.
But his decision to replace goalkeeper David Clarke with Rob Hennelly for the replay with the Dubs proved costly, as the Breaffy man conceded a penalty, which Diarmuid Connolly converted, and earned himself a black card.
"Any time a player makes an error you’re disappointed with that, disappointed for them because on the practice field they’ve shown umpteen times how they’ve perfected that skill or that play," said Rochford, speaking to RTE’s Saturday Sport.
"But that’s the way the game is. There are incidents that we can reflect on; refereeing decisions, players going off injured, but that doesn’t change the result.
"I’d like to think I’ve learned from last year and we’ll really only know that in the next weeks and months. Maybe it’s for other people to comment on or have an opinion on. I feel throughout 2016 I learned a lot about myself, the group and the management team.
"Look, I’m back for more so it mustn’t have been too bad.
"I don’t think thoughts of what could-have-been or what should-have-been do anybody any good. It’s certainly not the way I look at it and probably within a fortnight I had well moved on and we held our end-of-year review and put in place our plans for 2017."
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Mayo begin their Connacht SFC campaign on Sunday, May 21 against Sligo, who last week eased past New York in the Big Apple despite predictions that they would fall to an embarrassing defeat.
The winner of that will get a crack at defending provincial champions Galway in June. Mayo were gunning for a six in-a-row of Connacht titles last year, but came unstuck against the Tribesmen.
"Each and every year we go out understanding that last year’s trophy is handed back and we focus on the competition ahead of us," said Rochford.
"We were disappointed with the result and the performance in last year’s game against Galway, but that’s put to he back of our minds and the motivation for us is to get into a Connacht semi-final getting over the first hurdle that is Sligo.
"We’re back in 2017, we had a League campaign that was slightly inconsistent in the early parts, but we finished reasonably well and we’re really looking forward to a big game in Castlebar."
