Mayo’s Moran ‘disappointed’ with himself over Deegan confrontation

MAYO star Andy Moran has admitted his disappointment with the manner in which he remonstrated with referee Maurice Deegan during their league defeat to Tyrone last month.

Moran bumped the Laois official after he had awarded a free to the Red Hand during their heavy defeat in Castlebar, leading some to draw comparisons between that incident and the one that saw Diarmuid Connolly clash with Ciarán Brannigan during Dublin’s Leinster SFC clash with Carlow.

Connolly was handed a 12week ban for ‘minor physical interference with an official’ while Moran was black-carded after the incident but faced no further sanction.

And the reigning Footballer of the Year insisted that his reaction was out of character.

“To be honest with you, I would be disappointed with the way I remonstrated with Maurice at the time,” Moran said.

PUNISHMENT

“I took my punishment. I got it. And that’s the way it is.

“It was accidental. I’d be very disappointed. It’s not me, the way I kind of gave out to him. It is what it is. I got my punishment and I took it. Can’t really do much more about it.”

Mayo secured their top-f light status in typically dramatic fashion thanks to a late Kevin McLoughlin point that secured a draw with Donegal.

But Moran insists that even if they had gone down, there would still have been positives to take from the spring campaign.

“I was saying even before the Donegal game, if it did happen that we went down, that if we look at it honestly and look at what we are trying to do for championship, we did gain some serious players,” he argued.

“All of a sudden now, we got two corner-backs because of the injuries in Caolan Crowe and Eoin O’Donoghue. Conor Loftus stood up in a huge moment and took the frees, which is huge for us. Even if Cillian (O’Connor) is fit and playing, he is not going to be around forever, so Conor Loftus doing what he did. And Stephen Coen had a huge National League.”