‘It saved our bacon on the day’ – Mickey Harte highlights key moment in win over Mayo

The Ulster side shut up shop and didn’t cough up goal chances like they did in previous matches.

He acknowledged their priority was not to concede goals.

“We didn’t want to concede goals against the other teams either and just the way we were playing, we were actually offering more opportunities for the opposition.

“It’s a question of offering less opportunities and being more stubborn in defence and asking hard questions of them to break us down, which we probably hadn’t been doing in the three championship games we lost before the Westmeath game.”

Describing the game as a serious battle he added: “There was a lot of passion from both sides, a lot of good football, a lot of mistakes because the pressure was put on. Scores were at a premium. I think we started the game very well and could have been in a better position than we were. Then they came back at us.

“I’d say we won the first half in normal time and extra-time, and they came back and took over in both instances. It was a nip and tuck game; it looked like it was gonna go to the wire from very early on.

“Mayo will be kicking themselves that they didn’t seal the game when they had that point on us into the fourth minute of added time. I would congratulate the referee who let us play on in that added minute because there was a stoppage. If he had stopped at exactly four minutes, we wouldn’t have had the time to get the score.

“I am very happy with the way he handled that added minute because it saved our bacon on the day. Then I suppose in extra-time, it was a ding-dong battle. We went three up and could have had another couple.

“We were making life hard for ourselves but Mayo were good at coming back. They never say die either and it could just so easily, it’s a toss of a coin. That’s life and knockout football. You win or you lose and you’re in or you’re out.”

Asked whether the extra 20 minutes Derry had to play would impact on their performance in next weekend’s quarter final, Harte said: “That’s the price you pay for not being in the pole position, we all know that. The price you pay also is that you must go to the other team for a home venue in the preliminary one. So, these are the prices you have to pay, so you have to deal with that.

“Look at whatever, six or seven days, I don’t know when it’ll be. It’ll not be easy to recover from that, but still in all, I’d rather be thinking about recovering than thinking goodbye to January,” said Harte.