Antrim v Galway

[GalwayBayBoy]

Not surprised the slightest. This game had "Galway one point defeat in the qualifiers" written all over it all week. Antrim are not world beaters but are handy and hardy enough on home turf and given the opposition it was inevitably going to turn into the type of dour low-scoring game that we usually lose. Even then we led going into injury time but you just knew that they would somehow grasp defeat from the jaws of victory.

Mulholland has to be given time but he's made his fair share of mistakes over the past two games. Thought he was tactically outwitted by Kevin Walsh and today speaks for itself. His own stock has plummeted a bit. Galway's is as low as it's ever been. With Leitrim winning today we now offically have the worst record in Connacht over the past 8 years against non-Connacht opposition. 3 All-Ireland winning Galway U-21 teams over the past decade and the senior team still can't bate eggs. Something has definitely gone amiss somewhere.

Sad way for PJ to end his career. I presume he will definitely call it a day now. He had some great teammates in the first half of his Galway career but he's been surrounded by too many imposters in recent years. Some of them dare I say not fit to wear the maroon jersey.

Congrats to Antrim and best of luck for the rest of the Summer.

[orangeman]

Sad way for Joyce to go out if he does choose that route.

But what a win for Antrim.

If I were from Antrim I wouldn't like to have it said that they won a game contested by 2 bad teams. Galway are no bad side. And clearly neither are Antrim.


Congrats to Antrim.

Baker has brought Antrim some real good days.

He'll be off to Derry next year I'd imagine and why not ?.

[ONeill]

Really enjoyed that game. The standard wasn't deadly but who cares. Antrim showed an abundance of guts and could easily have won by 5-6 points. Any time they shot from distance in the second half it sailed over but were very reluctant to do so and hand-passed the blood out of the ball. I thought Kerr made a couple of vital close-up saves and the defence were extremely tight when Galway got within the 21. I think it was O'Boyle who made a couple of heroic blocks. The 2 McCanns had excellent second halves with Michael especially hitting come clinkers from distance. He could have scored double his tally if he'd not passed so often. Aodhan Gallagher was tidy in the second half and rarely makes any errors.

Galway were poor though. I couldn't see any semblance of a game-plan. I think they scored only 0-4 from play and one of those came from Joyce who came on late on, possessing more threat than anyone else on the Galway side. Kept an eye on Meehan - what has happened to the talent? He was spilling ball and showed little drive to get involved. Armstrong was poor.

Antrim can get a dander up at home and will be a difficult proposition.

[Sportacus]

Antrim looked very united and committed today.  They were also composed on the ball and worked some great scores.  It was crying out at times for a good ball into a full forward but Niblock wanted to come out and play football - Gallagher drifted into his space a couple of times but didn't get the breaks.  Would look like an obvious move to bring Niblock out to the 40 and put Magill on the square to give a direct option.  Our best play came when Scullion/MCann ran straight at Galway.  The defence strangled Galway a good few times.  Sweeney did well as sweeper but it does weaken your forward options and the first half was pretty crap to watch to be honest.  Kelly was doing well until he got injured but Gallagher did very well as his replacement - although we were giving away a few inches in midfield.  Michael McCann at times just looked like a player who was on his own patch and was going to boss things no matter who came along.  Up front Murray is a lovely footballer but he went quiet in last 15 minutes.  We don't have a Canavan or Cooper but today we had a lot of gutsy fellas playing pretty smart football and for once we finished off a tight game with a couple of late scores to win.  So well done.  We need a home draw now to keep it going.

By the way, there were over 100 people on the pitch during the warm-ups.  Do we really need that many people to get a game of football under way?               

[An Fhairche Abu]

First off congratulations to Antrim, I thought that bar some bad wides in the second half and a reluctance to use the wind to hit some more long range points that ye would have been up on the scoreboard instead of ourselves going into injury time.
We in Galway can have no complaints with the result, the better team over the 70 minutes won, all the best to ye in the next round.

With no win outside the province for 8 years, 9 one point defeats in 7 championship seasons (9!), no win against our biggest rivals Mayo at Senior since July 2008, losing to Sligo as many times in the last 5 years as in the previous 100, how is Antrim winning at home against a bad Galway side even a shock really, I wasn't one bit surprised when we lost and I suspect that the Antrim team aren't all that shocked that they won either, this isn't a big giant killing, this is one average at best team beating another one of the same level.
Sitting there watching PJ kick the lead score as the additional time was being announced I got a deja vu feeling about the whole thing, Meath last year, Wexford the year before, every Galway supporter has seen this time and time again, how can a team not hold out for at least a draw in those circumstances?

If I were from Antrim I wouldn't like to have it said that they won a game contested by 2 bad teams. Galway are no bad side. And clearly neither are Antrim.

I'd have to respectfully disagree with that, you have to call a spade a spade and honestly although Antrim were the better side today I didn't think that they were up to much at all, Galway are definitely not a good side. I got carried away a small bit with the performance against Kildare in the league and the Roscommon match thinking we were turning the corner back towards a semblance of the outfit we used to be but it was back to the usual way it's been for many years with Galway the last two games.

There wasn't much in this match for the neutral as the first half was one of the worst 35 minutes of inter county football I've ever had to sit through, absolutely putrid stuff from both teams, Antrim would have been delighted with the score at half time though, Galway had a strong breeze with them and Antrim were only a point down. The game marginally improved in the 2nd half but bar the tension in the last 15 minutes as the lead went back and forth there was a dearth of good football, the Antrim half back line were probably the best unit on display today, good in defence and they led a number of telling sallies up the field over the course of the game, Tony Scullion was particularly good in the first half when Antrim needed an outlet to get out of their own half.

Mulholland was caught out tactically the last two days out, what did the team management expect that Antrim were going to do when facing into a stiff breeze in 1st half? The exact same thing as Sligo did in the first half in Salthill, they packed their half and said "try and break us down", again Galway failed to do so and it's been successive Galway teams and management that have had no answer or even plan whatsoever for the massed defense over the past decade.

Mistakes by management were also made in that PJ should have been brought on much sooner today, Armstrong shouldn't have been near the starting 15 based on championship 2012 form to date (nor should he next year again, woeful bad today and really has he ever done it in the senior jersey?), McGrath shouldn't have been dropped (looked one of the better players on his introduction).
It sums it all up though that we are still reliant on a player of PJ's age to manufacture something at the end of the match to try and get the win.
Mulholland won't (and shouldn't) get the bullet after this defeat, he'll have learned a lot this year and he at least has a proven track record with the county at underage. It's time to stop thinking of a manager being the difference between winning and losing, manager after manager has already been tried with a lot of this group of players, could they all possibly be at fault? The players just aren't there and some of them on the team are still coasting by on undeserved reputations.

Too many Galway players weren't up to it today to go rating or singling them out, particularly in the first half when you'd do well to find any good thing to say about the Galway performance.

Meehan didn't have a good day on the frees but I'd be reluctant to criticise a man who probably shouldn't even be on the pitch due to the  numerous injuries that have robbed the best player we produced since the last All Ireland winning teams of what should have been the best years of his career.

No players go out to do anything but perform to their best but honestly it's soul destroying stuff travelling to watch the team lose by a point in championship game after championship game, I can't imagine how the players feel after putting in months and months of effort to get nothing but a one point loss in the qualifiers as a reward, I'd say sickened doesn't begin to cover it.
Does anyone have any answers to the current malaise in Galway football?

Congrats to Leitrim today, delighted to see one of the Connacht teams advance to round 3.

[GalwayBayBoy]

Kept an eye on Meehan - what has happened to the talent?

He's lucky to be even playing football. His career was in serious doubt only 6 months ago. Even now he can't really train properly.

[rodney trotter]

Great win for Antrim, They have 3 or 4 players like the McCanns who would make any county side in the Country. They have also done well this year without their most natural forward CJ McCourty. He broke his leg in a McKenna cup game with uuj in januray, and never on the panel since the injury.

Bradley has done a good job with them, fairly consistent every year since he took over.

[saffron sam2]

Were the Free staters intimated by having to go to Belfast over the 12th weekend / fortnight?

I genuinely believe that this factor was worth 3/4 points to Antrim.

Would love a home draw against Tyrone next week. Or Kerry. Or Kildare.

[bannside]

Fair play to the Galway posters on here - good sports, wishing us well etc.

To be honest you came up to our place today and played the exact game we wanted. It was more akin to basketball at times, and not a dirty stroke in anger all day. A dry ball and a running game suited us fine, and as it turned out, all our guys did well today - more than one or two seasons bests. You let us play football and on home turf we can do that all day long.

Seasoned Antrim supporters have got used to not expecting that much. But every so often we show glimpses of real potential. Today was one of those days, and by God we will enjoy it (we are neighbouring counties with Derry and to get a longer run than them is great crack!!!)

One swallow dosent make a summer - but we are one more victory off an AI QF and for sure the next day we will throw the kitchen sink at it to prove we can do these days back to back. In the meantime we will enjoy tonight. Over the course of the last 40 years since I started this crack, I think we deserve it.

[saffron sam2]

Fair play to the Galway posters on here - good sports, wishing us well etc.

To be honest you came up to our place today and played the exact game we wanted. It was more akin to basketball at times, and not a dirty stroke in anger all day. A dry ball and a running game suited us fine, and as it turned out, all our guys did well today - more than one or two seasons bests. You let us play football and on home turf we can do that all day long.

Seasoned Antrim supporters have got used to not expecting that much. But every so often we show glimpses of real potential. Today was one of those days, and by God we will enjoy it (we are neighbouring counties with Derry and to get a longer run than them is great crack!!!)

One swallow dosent make a summer - but we are one more victory off an AI QF and for sure the next day we will throw the kitchen sink at it to prove we can do these days back to back. In the meantime we will enjoy tonight. Over the course of the last 40 years since I started this crack, I think we deserve it.

Two points.

1. Antrim currently have better players than Derry and even without four of the best of them, it's no real surprise that Antrim's summer was longer.

2. Still two victories needed before a quarter final. Would love to see the Saffrons run out for a championship match in Croke Park.

[Cosmo Kramer]

Would agree with most of what has been said here regarding the current state of Galway football. It surprises me that people are still surprised when they don't do well. They haven't been good for close to ten years. It sounds like Antrim gave them too much respect early in the game, no team should feel that way against the current Galway team.

So why has a team with a fair amount of recent underage success been so poor at senior level? I'm sure there are specific things going on within the county that outsiders don't know about and some players are either not good enough or have the wrong attitude. But I think there is a deeper problem.

Galway, more than any other team, take pride in playing a traditional direct and open style of football. 15 against 15, man to man marking all over the field. Kerry pretend they play that way but they don't. Mayo used to but changed their style. Cork, Dublin, Donegal and Tyrone obviously don't play that way at all these days. Sligo and Antrim didn't when they played Galway because they both analysed how they could beat them.

Galway seem to be the one team that are so set in their traditional style of play that they cannot adapt to the modern game at all. Traditionalist gobshites like Spillane and McGee love them for this but the reality is that it is the very reason why they cannot be successful. The game has moved on - Galway haven't.

Regarding the underage success - we're not yet at the stage where minor and under 21 teams play 11 men back, these grades tend to be more open and this suits Galway teams. But other teams pick their best underage talent and mould them into a different kind of senior player whereas Galway try to get the players to continue with the same style.

This is difficult for Galway because it's hard to see them changing their style to adapt successfully at this stage when they haven't been able to do it up to now. It may be that we have to wait for the game to evolve again to suit a different style of play before we see Galway competing at the business end of the championship again. As long as they continue as they are teams know exactly how to set up against them to ensure victory eight or nine times out of ten.

[Sportacus]

Galway played a sweeper today

[drici]

We'll probably just do the same as Sligo again.

Getting a right habit now.

[galwayman]

Just in the door from Belfast.I cannot really put into words just yet just how disappointed and disillusioned I feel right now as a long term supporter of Galway football teams.
The lack of bite and intensity in our play today was the worst part for me.
It just wasn't there.

Cosmo -you make some interesting points definitely re the problems we have in Galway.

PS it wasn't really that Galway played a sweeper today.it was more a case of Antrim withdrawing some of their forwards into deeper roles and their men staying put in defence.they would not have played an extra man back if Antrim had kept their 6 forwards up.

[ONeill]

Some craic in Casement tonight I'd imagine.