Galway vs Dublin - All Ireland Semi Final - 11/8/2018

[galwayman]

Galway had a good first half yesterday and the penalty miss was a disaster for them, but there is no way that it cost them the game. They were only two points behind at half time, a deficit that could have been wiped out in three or four minutes if they were real contenders. But as soon as the ball was thrown in for the second half it was clear that they were not going to be able to hold on to the Dubs' coattails.

Commiserations to the Galway lads on this forum but as a Dubs supporter I'm delighted with the win and extremely proud of this exceptional group of lads.

Ah now I don't think I've heard even one person suggest that the penalty miss cost us the game.
It clearly didn't. Dublin were far superior to us after half time and would have won the game regardless no issue there.
It did change the nature of the game at the time though.
We needed to be taking chances like that as well as some of the other bad wides in that first half.
But Dublin clearly had another gear that we couldn't live with.
As a Galway football man I'm proud of that team though.
I couldnt give a shit what anyone else says - I personally believe we have made a lot of progress this year:

[Duine Eile]

You could analyse this game until the cows come home and say Galway should have done this, that and the other but the reality is at the start of the year this team were expected to be relegated from Division 1, get beaten by Mayo, maybe make the Super 8s, in fairness to them they surpassed all expectations. Yes they could have done much better yesterday in regards to finishing and so on but as a Galway fan I'm proud of how far they came this year. They need to learn from this year now though and push on next year, hopefully Liam Silke will be back, he's actually Galway's penalty taker and would probably have buried that one yesterday. We need changes to our half back line, Kieran Malloy came on yesterday and showed he should have gotten much more game time this year. You'd nearly hope Corofin don't go on a run in the club championship this year so we can have a full panel to pick from. Anyway, that's it for us for another year for the seniors, hopefully the hurlers and the minors can finish the job, Gaillimh Abu!

[DJGaliv]

I would love to see Liam Silke, Kieran Molly and even Cillian McDaid back on the panel for next year. I think we struggle in the half-back line and the increased options with lads who have pace would be massive for this team. In a game of transitions pace is king. Bringing someone like McDaid on instead of GOD would have made more of an impact. Hopefully, in the next few years he'll be home.

In midfield, Tom Flynn has been a colossus. We do miss Conroy's leadership, but having Flynn and Duggan with Cooke to come on isn't too bad.

Up front we are going well, however, we need a free-taker. Would McHugh have kicked all his frees and penalty yesterday? Hopefully we can build the team around Burke, Comer, Walsh and Daly - with Brannigan and Kelly still 22/23

[An Fhairche Abu]

You could analyse this game until the cows come home and say Galway should have done this, that and the other but the reality is at the start of the year this team were expected to be relegated from Division 1, get beaten by Mayo, maybe make the Super 8s, in fairness to them they surpassed all expectations. Yes they could have done much better yesterday in regards to finishing and so on but as a Galway fan I'm proud of how far they came this year. They need to learn from this year now though and push on next year, hopefully Liam Silke will be back, he's actually Galway's penalty taker and would probably have buried that one yesterday. We need changes to our half back line, Kieran Malloy came on yesterday and showed he should have gotten much more game time this year. You'd nearly hope Corofin don't go on a run in the club championship this year so we can have a full panel to pick from. Anyway, that's it for us for another year for the seniors, hopefully the hurlers and the minors can finish the job, Gaillimh Abu!

Spot on with all that post Duine Eile, I've said it all year that the HB line is the weakest on the Galway team, in Gaelic football these days it needs to be your best or near your best line on the pitch.
No offence to the football juggernaut that is Corofin but another club winning Galway this year would be far more preferable from a county team point of view.

[Captain Obvious]

Absolute clowns saying Mayo of 2017 would have put up more of a fight yesterday. That has as much relevance as us saying the galway 98 team would have beaten Dublin yesterday.

Dead right

How is it dead right FFS , all we were saying was Mayo last year were streets ahead of what Galway showed yesterday , that's dead right make no mistake about that.

Mayo last year was beaten by Galway,lucky to beat Derry at home, needed extra time to beat Cork and needed replays to beat Kerry and Roscommon. Don't let one game against one team cloud your judgement on where Mayo was last year.

Galway yesterday were every bit as expected from a side that played in their first All Ireland semi final for 17 years but over the course of the championship they played better than Mayo did last year.

[thebackbar1]

You could analyse this game until the cows come home and say Galway should have done this, that and the other but the reality is at the start of the year this team were expected to be relegated from Division 1, get beaten by Mayo, maybe make the Super 8s, in fairness to them they surpassed all expectations. Yes they could have done much better yesterday in regards to finishing and so on but as a Galway fan I'm proud of how far they came this year. They need to learn from this year now though and push on next year, hopefully Liam Silke will be back, he's actually Galway's penalty taker and would probably have buried that one yesterday. We need changes to our half back line, Kieran Malloy came on yesterday and showed he should have gotten much more game time this year. You'd nearly hope Corofin don't go on a run in the club championship this year so we can have a full panel to pick from. Anyway, that's it for us for another year for the seniors, hopefully the hurlers and the minors can finish the job, Gaillimh Abu!

Spot on with all that post Duine Eile, I've said it all year that the HB line is the weakest on the Galway team, in Gaelic football these days it needs to be your best or near your best line on the pitch.
No offence to the football juggernaut that is Corofin but another club winning Galway this year would be far more preferable from a county team point of view.

100% Duine Eile &  An Fhairce Abu

It should also be noted that a good number of the team were involved in NUIGs run to the sigerson final, how many matches has comer played for county, college and club this year, he was a student and also had a part time job pulling pints. In other big counties a nice soft "job" would of been found for him.

The galway support yesterday was terrible, i really have a problem with galway football supporters who didn't travel yesterday, didn't go to a hurling match all year, yet will be in croker next sunday.

Coming home a lot of galway supporters were commenting on how good mayo were last year to only lose by one point to Dublin, yet browsing twitter this morning i was surprised to see so many mayo supporters taking glee in galways loss. It reminds me of a fight between two blind men over a comb.

[mouview]

Ya can talk about Mayo 2017, Galway 2001 etc till the cows come home. The simple fact of the matter is it's August. Galway don't do football after July anymore. To worried about racing and festivals and posing up and down shop street to be worried about football this time of year

Dear dear dear. Like saying Mayo don't do football after August anymore.

[kerryforsam2018]

McCaffrey jumped into the midfielder twice, got away with it

+1 Should have been blackcarded for blocking Galway player

[criostlinn]

Ya can talk about Mayo 2017, Galway 2001 etc till the cows come home. The simple fact of the matter is it's August. Galway don't do football after July anymore. To worried about racing and festivals and posing up and down shop street to be worried about football this time of year

Dear dear dear. Like saying Mayo don't do football after August anymore.

Its not really thou, is it.

I don't know. Galway fans seem happy with it so who am I to say different but Kevin Walsh has been in charge of Galway for 4 years and despite beating Mayo in 3 of them, they haven't performed in one single game after July. ie the serious end of the championship. In fact they have played 5 games in August under his reign and have lost by a combined total of 44 points.

[seafoid]

Ya can talk about Mayo 2017, Galway 2001 etc till the cows come home. The simple fact of the matter is it's August. Galway don't do football after July anymore. To worried about racing and festivals and posing up and down shop street to be worried about football this time of year

Dear dear dear. Like saying Mayo don't do football after August anymore.

Its not really thou, is it.

I don't know. Galway fans seem happy with it so who am I to say different but Kevin Walsh has been in charge of Galway for 4 years and despite beating Mayo in 3 of them, they haven't performed in one single game after July. ie the serious end of the championship. In fact they have played 5 games in August under his reign and have lost by a combined total of 44 points.

So what. Neither team have won anything. Losing is losing.
Mayo were very unlucky to blossom at the same time as the Dubs. Maybe Galway might nick a Sam after the collapse.

[TheGreatest]

Again, a lot of nonsense talked about on a Dublin match thread.

Dublin average score in championship is 27 points. They scored 1-24 on Saturday.

Galway put up a decent score too 2-12. Should of scored more.  Compare that to yesterdays match..

The poor attendance was more like down to Galway's lack of support, id imagine most of the Galway fans there lived in an around Dublin.  You cant blame them , Hurling replay and now the final.

I know it hurts you all that Dublin are good and winning and you haven't been able to rub it in when we lose, I know it hurts lads.

Another nice stat that you will like is the average age of Dublin team that started Saturday is 25.5.

[fearsiuil]

Again, a lot of nonsense talked about on a Dublin match thread.

Dublin average score in championship is 27 points. They scored 1-24 on Saturday.

Galway put up a decent score too 2-12. Should of scored more.  Compare that to yesterdays match..

The poor attendance was more like down to Galway's lack of support, id imagine most of the Galway fans there lived in an around Dublin.  You cant blame them , Hurling replay and now the final.

I know it hurts you all that Dublin are good and winning and you haven't been able to rub it in when we lose, I know it hurts lads.

Another nice stat that you will like is the average age of Dublin team that started Saturday is 25.5.

Involved with Dublin club, we could not get rid of 2 Hill and 2 excellent halfway line stand tickets for this match. Stand tickets were given away just to use them. That is a first for us.

[TheGreatest]

Again, a lot of nonsense talked about on a Dublin match thread.

Dublin average score in championship is 27 points. They scored 1-24 on Saturday.

Galway put up a decent score too 2-12. Should of scored more.  Compare that to yesterdays match..

The poor attendance was more like down to Galway's lack of support, id imagine most of the Galway fans there lived in an around Dublin.  You cant blame them , Hurling replay and now the final.

I know it hurts you all that Dublin are good and winning and you haven't been able to rub it in when we lose, I know it hurts lads.

Another nice stat that you will like is the average age of Dublin team that started Saturday is 25.5.

Involved with Dublin club, we could not get rid of 2 Hill and 2 excellent halfway line stand tickets for this match. Stand tickets were given away just to use them. That is a first for us.

Definitely a bit of that going on, seen some myself, however the majority of the support of the 54K was Dublin support.

[An Fhairche Abu]

Ya can talk about Mayo 2017, Galway 2001 etc till the cows come home. The simple fact of the matter is it's August. Galway don't do football after July anymore. To worried about racing and festivals and posing up and down shop street to be worried about football this time of year

Dear dear dear. Like saying Mayo don't do football after August anymore.

Its not really thou, is it.

I don't know. Galway fans seem happy with it so who am I to say different but Kevin Walsh has been in charge of Galway for 4 years and despite beating Mayo in 3 of them, they haven't performed in one single game after July. ie the serious end of the championship. In fact they have played 5 games in August under his reign and have lost by a combined total of 44 points.

Given that the schedule has dramatically changed this year I don't see the logic of this "not performing in August" narrative to be honest. Are we to assume that the Super 8s Kildare and Kerry results should be disregarded because the games were in July? Is qualifying for the semi final for the first time in 17 years worthless because that was secured in July and not at the "business end"? What worth are we to really put on the Monaghan match given the uniqueness of the circumstances?

Mayo fans seen to have delighted in the result Saturday, if ye are happy taking plaudits for coming very close to Dublin over the past few years and that the likely All Ireland result will somehow confirm that Mayo are the second best team in the country, great. If you want to take this also as confirmation of Mayo's superiority to Galway as a football team, that's fine as well. It is all irrelevant to anyone in Galway as we have more than enough problems to fix ourselves in 2019. The assumption seems to be that Mayo will bounce back to challenge Dublin next year again, we'll have to wait and see.

Am I happy with Galway's end to the season? Of course not. Next year will require big improvements to get to where we need to be. We may never get there.
For those of us who closely follow Galway through league and championship though, there is a clear distinction between the capability and the overall squad quality from 2015 to now and I struggle to see how anyone can make the argument it hasn't improved.

Hopefully given the club issues Croke Park might look at changing the semi finals and the final into July to free up August and September for the clubs, perhaps this is going to be the only way Galway will get any joy moving forward as opposed to trying to further improve.

[Halfquarter]

Ya can talk about Mayo 2017, Galway 2001 etc till the cows come home. The simple fact of the matter is it's August. Galway don't do football after July anymore. To worried about racing and festivals and posing up and down shop street to be worried about football this time of year

Dear dear dear. Like saying Mayo don't do football after August anymore.

Its not really thou, is it.

I don't know. Galway fans seem happy with it so who am I to say different but Kevin Walsh has been in charge of Galway for 4 years and despite beating Mayo in 3 of them, they haven't performed in one single game after July. ie the serious end of the championship. In fact they have played 5 games in August under his reign and have lost by a combined total of 44 points.

Given that the schedule has dramatically changed this year I don't see the logic of this "not performing in August" narrative to be honest. Are we to assume that the Super 8s Kildare and Kerry results should be disregarded because the games were in July? Is qualifying for the semi final for the first time in 17 years worthless because that was secured in July and not at the "business end"? What worth are we to really put on the Monaghan match given the uniqueness of the circumstances?

Mayo fans seen to have delighted in the result Saturday, if ye are happy taking plaudits for coming very close to Dublin over the past few years and that the likely All Ireland result will somehow confirm that Mayo are the second best team in the country, great. If you want to take this also as confirmation of Mayo's superiority to Galway as a football team, that's fine as well. It is all irrelevant to anyone in Galway as we have more than enough problems to fix ourselves in 2019. The assumption seems to be that Mayo will bounce back to challenge Dublin next year again, we'll have to wait and see.

Am I happy with Galway's end to the season? Of course not. Next year will require big improvements to get to where we need to be. We may never get there.
For those of us who closely follow Galway through league and championship though, there is a clear distinction between the capability and the overall squad quality from 2015 to now and I struggle to see how anyone can make the argument it hasn't improved.

Hopefully given the club issues Croke Park might look at changing the semi finals and the final into July to free up August and September for the clubs, perhaps this is going to be the only way Galway will get any joy moving forward as opposed to trying to further improve.

Galway have been well beaten in their last two championship matches, giving out about what fans from other counties think is not going to change that fact.