"It is all a bit surreal," admits history-making Mayo football boss Andy Moran

Mayo manager Andy Moran has stated that he is deeply honoured to be manager of the first Mayo team to win the All-Ireland SFC title since 1951 - and he had a special mention for the late John O’Mahony.

He told the post-match press conference after the memorable triumph over Kerry: “It is all a bit surreal. I think of people who are sick at home, and who missed out on today.

"I think of some of the great managers, John O’Mahony, who was honoured here today from his time as Galway manager.

"There are some great people who are sadly no longer with us today.

“I am just deeply honoured to be representing the people of Mayo."

Moran said that despite Kerry being a lot of people pre-match favourites, he always believed that if Mayo were in the mix at the home straight that they would have a great chance of victory.

“I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, and I know that the general narrative was that we had no chance today.

"We were looking at it and we thought, hold on a second, Louth beat Armagh, Louth beat Dublin and we beat Louth and we got no credit for beating them.

"Even after the Monaghan game, we won, and we still got no credit. Whilst it wasn’t back to the walls stuff, we thought that everyone was writing us of ahead of this game.

"We had 100 training sessions done to this point, and we were confident that we could at least give it a good rattle. We thought that if we were in the game coming down the stretch that we would have a chance.”

Moran said that he hopes this victory will give some peace to former players who suffered defeats in All-Ireland finals.

He elaborated: “Even last night I was thinking of Donal Vaughan, Liam McHale, guys who have suffered real heartache in All-Ireland finals.

"I just hope that today them guys get a bit of peace from this success. I am sure that I will find some peace from this victory for myself on Wednesday or Thursday.

“I am also so grateful to all of the great managers who have managed the senior team for the last 75 years, and we are just the lucky ones who got over the line. “

Did Moran ever have any doubts during the course of the game?

“Of course there were doubts, especially when David Clifford puts the ball to the back of the net.

"After that goal, Donnacha McHugh went on to have an outstanding game for the next 55 minutes.

"I think there were two massive moments in the game: David McBrien gets his first point in championship history, and he had only scored two goals in previous games; then Jack Carney does what he has done all year and kicks a crucial two-pointer and all of a sudden the game is back to five points, and then we get it back to three and the game has turned.

"Our pressure and our press starts working.

"I remember last year having a great conversation with Stephen O’Hanlon in Monaghan and he was a top class basketball player. I said to him 'is the two pointer more valuable in Gaelic Football than basketball', and he said ‘absolutely.’

"You go from three to two in basketball and you go from one to two in football. We knew we had the shooters to hit them today.

“I have been waiting for this win since 2003, probably even longer as a minor. We will go to Castlebar tomorrow night and I am sure that it will be a great night. I will be encouraging the young fellas just to enjoy this.”

What did Moran say to his side at half time?

“We were confident in the work that we had done and we did an awful lot right in that first half and finished that half really strong.

"We wondered where can we get a bit better, and we thought get David McBrien involved in the attack, and we felt that they were leaving him.

"If you look at the statistics and see that McBrien has never scored a point before in the championship you might leave the wings a little bit open and we got him a tiny bit more involved in the attack, and then Darragh Beirne gets a goal.

"Our tempo and pace was hurting Kerry and we went out for the second half and away we went.”