LONDON senior football captain Dave McGreevy concedes that the Exiles face an enormous task against Mayo in Ruislip, but his manager Ciaran Deely insists they’re as best prepared as they can be.
The Westerners will arrive in London as third favourites to win the All-Ireland, behind heavyweights Dublin and Kerry, but first they’re seeking a sixth successive Connacht Championship, and they’ll open up their defence in London today.
Kingdom Kerry-Gaels man McGreevy, who was named captain by Deely before their National League campaign, has highlighted the gulf in class between the two sides ahead of their quarter-final clash.
“They're a Division 1 team, a solid Division 1 team,” said McGreevy. “They've been playing against the top guys for so many seasons and we haven't. That's the big thing. So to lift the game for that is going to be tough.”
However, Deely is in bullish mood ahead of the game, which will be played before a sell-out crowd in Ruislip.
“We're happy, we've been training hard,” said the Wexford native. “The lads have now played up to four games with their clubs in the league with their clubs and we had [a challenge match against] Louth a few weeks ago.
“Then we had run outs against Wexford and Cork. Those games came at the right time; we had a good win against Wexford, who were a bit depleted, and then Cork had a very strong team out, so we lost that game.
“But in many ways that Cork game was perfect for us because we learned a lot about ourselves and also experienced the type of intensity that Mayo will bring to the game and the level that they'll be operating at. So, hopefully, the level of opposition will be no shock to our lads.”
Deely is refusing to focus too much on the eventual result, dismissing the notion of an upset, but he hopes his young side can at least learn from the experience, if a positive result proves beyond them.
“It's very difficult to even compete against Mayo because they're probably the second or third best team in Ireland at the moment,” he admitted. “If you look at the league, we came eighth in Division 4, so the gulf between the two teams is huge.
“Nobody has stopped Mayo in Connacht in the last five years and I don't think anyone is expecting London to be the team to do that. But we're kind of just viewing this as another step along the way in our development.
“We've got a lot of young players, a lot of London-born players, so for them to come up against a team like Mayo I think is fantastic as a one-off, they'll learn so much from the event and the day.
“I think, at this stage, we'd prefer to play a team lower down than Mayo that we could perhaps compete better against, but we will at the very least learn a lot from the event and the match itself.”
