Rochford was Derry relieved!
MAYO pulled off a famous win over Kerry to reach the All-ireland final - but beating Derry pleased Stephen Rochford most.
Mayo were in grave danger of exiting the Championship on the first day of July when Derry took them to extra-time in Round Two of the qualifiers.
But the 2016 All-ireland finalists dug deep and eventually won by 11 points, leaving Rochford as proud as punch.
Asked when he was most pleased with his team’s character along their ninegame campaign, he didn’t think twice.
Boss Rochford said: “Against Derry, because we could not hit a barn door with a banjo that night. We were getting very frustrated in what we were doing.
“It wasn’t even that fellas were taking ridiculous shots from out on the wings, we were just missing easy shots that, since then, we have been a lot better at nailing.
“I remember saying to the boys afterwards that they had shown a real steeliness by sticking at it. We were just relieved to get to extra-time and that, in some ways, was when we stood up and delivered.
“It took another couple of games before we really started to click into gear but we could easily have bowed out on that evening.”
Rochford recalled the madness of those 90 minutes.
He said: “There is a lot of you saying, ‘This isn’t your day’. We kicked 18 wides, hit the post five times and dropped five into the goalkeeper’s hands. That’s 28 scoring opportunities, on top of what we actually scored.
“People said that we played terrible that night but you don’t create over 40 chances by playing poorly. But you were still saying, ‘just get us to the bloody finish line, just get this bad petrol out of the tank’.”