McKeegan: Armagh must raise game for Mayo visit

By Shaun Casey

ARMAGH are well aware of the challenge they have ahead of them this weekend as they welcome promotion hopeful Mayo to the BOX-IT Athletic Grounds in what is a crunch clash, says boss Karl McKeegan.

The Orchard County got their first win of the season last weekend, beating pointless Sligo with three first-half goals from the full-forward line of Stephen Keenan, Pauric McNaughton and Charlie McArdle paving the way.

But the visit of Mayo is a much tougher challenge. “If you let Mayo hurl, they can destroy you and they did that to us last year, albeit we didn’t have a lot to play for, but they have an awful lot of good hurlers,” said McKeegan.

“They kind of play the same style as Sligo, but they’re a wee bit better on the ball and they’ve been there or thereabouts for a good while so we’re under no illusions that if we want to get two points on the board, we have to up our game considerably from last weekend.

“We did a lot of things right last weekend which was great to see from a coaching point of view, but we know we made a lot of mistakes as well and probably could have been punished a bit worse. Sligo had eight or nine wides in the first half, so we’ll have to look into that.”

Armagh have three huge games left in the league against Mayo, Cavan and league leaders London as they hope to cling onto their Division Three status. McKeegan believes that his side need four points from their next three outings to avoid relegation to the basement division.

“We still have three games to go, two at home and one away and I’d say we probably need two wins from those three games to be safe. The way the results are going, it’s a crazy league and it looks like we’ll probably need three wins to stay up.

“Sligo are probably sitting in a nominal position, and they have London and Roscommon to go so it’s going to be tough on them and it’s probably going to be someone going down with them at this stage. The boys know what’s ahead of them but it’s great to get off the mark and to have two points on the board now heading into these last three games.”