It was a bad, bad day at the office for Mayo.

Another Connacht SFC defeat to Galway, a sending-off for Diarmuid O'Connor and a horrendous injury for Tom Parsons; Stephen Rochford later revealed he had dislocated his knee.

The manager has, once again, a huge job on his hands to lift his men off the canvas and fire them up for a summer burst. They have done it before, but The Sunday Game panel does not believe they'll do it again.

"With Tom Parsons injured and Cillian O'Connor a question mark, Diarmuid O'Connor now out for the next match... Mayo are probably in terminal decline at this stage," Colm O'Rourke said after their loss in Castlebar.

"It's a long, long road for them to get to the quarter-finals in Croke Park."  

Tomas Ó Sé concurred. "For the top teams it's all about the Super 8s," he said. "It makes it so much harder for Mayo to get there after losing Tom Parsons.

"Galway will be in a great place. They owe Roscommon if they come out the other side so Galway have work to do. There was no great football out there.  The key for Galway this year would be making it to the Super 8s. That would be progress. Mayo are going to be questioned now like never before." 

Joe Brolly highlighted the absence of one man in particular as having a big impact on the Mayo performance.  

"Without Lee Keegan it's such a marked difference; the ability for them to translate from defence to attack. 

"You wouldn't fancy them to come in to the Super 8s to be playing against teams like Donegal, Tyrone... you just wouldn't fancy them. You feel somehow like it's all in the past."

Rochford himself reflected on a disappointing result, and revealed that Parsons had dislocated his knee.

"I'm extremely disappointed. I expected to win with the effort we put in along with the focus and attitude the players had shown over the last couple of weeks. We just weren't good enough on the day. 

"Galway got the goal during six minutes of injury time. A number of good scoring opportunities we didn't execute, there was the sending off. In a game of tight margins you can look at a multiple reasons. They'll only be excuses. We must now prepare for the month of June.

"Tom has a knee dislocation of some sort. The extent of it, we're not sure at the moment."