Mallow manager Declan O'Connell believes Mallow can push on after securing survival

IT took a second attempt, but Mallow got over the line in their Premier Senior FC relegation playoff with Carrigaline.

When it comes to finals, or the other end of the spectrum with relegation playoffs, one shot games come down to more than just individual quality. Temperament, belief and composure are more often than not the difference between teams of Premier Senior quality, and Mallow manager Declan O’Connell trusted his players to get the job done when it mattered.

“We were very disappointed with our performance the last day,” he begins. “Obviously, the conditions were horrendous, but we were lucky to get out of jail.

“We spent the last two weeks really focusing on performance, and I'm just delighted that the lads actually gave one today, so it’s great to come out with the win.

“We shuffled the team around for different matchups and we just thought we could attack Carrigaline from different areas, and that definitely paid off in the first half with those two goals.

“Carrigaline are a good team. They were always going to have that purple patch, [and] we were expecting that. It was just a case of just having cool heads, and obviously that third goal was quite decisive then at the end, so we're very happy with being able to manage that performance.” 

With the pressure of facing the drop a factor for both sides, was Declan ever worried that Carrigaline would edge it?

“No, to be honest. I was quite excited about the performance. I think if you look back at our championship campaign, we've really gotten better as the games have gone on.

“Today I came in just expecting that performance, and if we got that performance, I was confident that we’d get over the line. So maybe naively, I was quite excited about today in terms of performance.

“It’s great to win today, but I don’t take any joy in it,” Declan explains. “It’s just a survival thing, whereas we have bigger ambitions. We were a kick of a ball away from a quarter-final and that's ultimately the minimum of our standards and where we want to be, so [we’re] absolutely looking to push on next year.” 

"Nobody wants to face into that [relegation], but I suppose the whole thing here of not letting that loom over us in terms of outcome, we were just really focused on performance.” 

While it wasn’t a game that Mallow wanted to be taking part in, their season did end with a positive, and O’Connell is keen to see his club push on over the course of the next few seasons.

“This club has a real solid foundation to compete at senior level for many, many years to come. There's a lot of good stuff going on at underage as well, so we'd be very confident of pushing on.”