Us now Taylor’s focus

”We came out after half time looking for a reaction and we didn’t get it, Laois did, and that was ultimately the winning and losing of the game” said Taylor in the tunnel afterwards.

“I thought without playing well in the first half we were still in the game at half time.

“We had made a lot of mistakes, we had a lot of turnovers from our own mistakes, but we were still in the game. We talked about it at half time and we came out looking for a reaction, but we didn’t get it, and in ten minutes Laois were out of sight.”

With four rounds of games left, the pressure is on Sligo to qickly find some form, and Taylor wants his charges to ask some serious questions of themselves.

“We’ve got to learn from it, we’ve got to learn from the mistakes, and there were a lot of them. We have to try take some of the positives out of it too.

“The lads need to ask themselves if they want to stay in Division 3, because that’s what’s ahead of us.

“We have four games coming up, we have Louth in two weeks time and it’s going to be a serious battle.

“We have four huge battles left, and we’ll have to get four to six points out of those games.”

To compound matters on Sunday, star forward Niall Murphy was forced off early after a heavy but fair collision with Laois defender Marty Scully.

Murphy played on for a few minutes, but eventually had to be withdrawn.

“Niall had to go to hospital there, it wasn’t a dirty challenge from what I could see.

“Niall was a huge loss, he is one of our top players but Barry O’Gorman went in there and for a young man, he did his best.

“We’ve talked about the negatives and we have to take some of the positives and we move forward to two weeks time against Louth, and I’m probably happier that it’s two weeks because we need the two weeks right now to reassess and reset ourselves and see what we’re capable of doing.”