MAYO have named an unchanged team for Saturday’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Donegal.
Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly have gone with the same XV that hammered Sligo 6-25 to 2-11 in a one-sided Connacht final last month at Dr Hyde Park.
Aidan O’Shea scored 3-4 in that game. The Breaffy man has been named at centre-forward, but is expeted to line out at the edge of the square.
The five-in-a-row Connacht champions will be playing only their third Championship game of the summer having beaten Galway in a Connacht semi-final.
For Donegal, it’ll be their sixth having played Tyrone, Armagh, Derry, Monaghan and Galway on their way to the last eight.
Rory Gallagher, the Donegal manager, is expecting a titanic tussle at Croke Park in what will be the third meeting of the teams in the Championship in the last four seasons.
Donegal won the 2012 All-Ireland final with Mayo claiming victory at the quarter-final stage in 2013.
“They are a top class team,” Gallagher said.
“They have been consistently up there for the last five years.
“They play a very distinctive brand of football, they are very attack-minded, they have pushed Aidan O’Shea inside this year and that has given them an extras dimension.
“They are very strong running team as well and they are clearly one of the top teams in the country.
“They are different to any of the Ulster teams – they are very different. They are bigger for a start.
“Go back to 2013, our biggest problem was in the middle of the park where they absolutely destroyed us with clean fetching and in breaking ball and that is going to be a huge area as well.”
Mayo (All-Ireland SFC quarter-final v Donegal): David Clarke; Ger Cafferkey, Donal Vaughan, Keith Higgins; Lee Keegan, Tom Cunniffe, Colm Boyle; Seamus O’Shea, Tom Parsons; Diarmaid O’Connor, Aidan O’Shea, Kevin McLoughlin; Andy Moran, Cillian O’Connor, Jason Doherty.
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