Connacht senior football final Galway v Roscommon July 10th

[mjg]

For God's sake seasick will ya get a job a woman or a man if that's your thing

[barking mad]

How's the head sea sick
What a day outside probably bit windy up ur part but that'll pass over after tomorrow
Ice cream is a melting, tar is a melting and Galway hopes are a melting.
Nearly time to get it on..

[Rossfan]

For God's sake seasick will ya get a job a woman or a man if that's your thing

He's outsyfíning Syfín at this stage but at least Syfín is not 11 or 12
I'm still of the view it's 50/50 and will depend on things like who learned the most last day or who's improved more. There's also the bounce if a ball, mistakes or a Ref's decision.
All to play for.
UP ROS!!!!

[seafoid]

For God's sake seasick will ya get a job a woman or a man if that's your thing

He's outsyfíning Syfín at this stage but at least Syfín is not 11 or 12
I'm still of the view it's 50/50 and will depend on things like who learned the most last day or who's improved more. There's also the bounce if a ball, mistakes or a Ref's decision.
All to play for.
UP ROS!!!!

It would be great if Sligo could beat Clare and Mayo get over Kildare.
I still think Galway have the edge over the rossies.

[seafoid]

Collins is a big loss, it would appear

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/galway-should-have-the-slightest-of-edges-over-roscommon-1.2723509

Once Mayo were beaten both of these counties had to revise radically their season's agenda. Galway knew there was no point beating the champions and not following it up whereas Roscommon may have been tempted to view a meeting with the Connacht standard bearers as the opportunity to test themselves, see how they got on in the qualifiers and pore over the notes for next year.

Instead both teams knew that defeat last Sunday would count as a blow to their morale.
That was and remains the context for the much reviled draw in Salthill a week ago. No matter how badly they each wanted to win, neither wanted to risk anything that might have led to a careless defeat.

Roscommon were heading into their first final in six years with a number of young players and short their regular full back, the injured Neil Collins, and so their deployment of a sweeper was no great surprise.

Their opponents have been playing the defensive game for a good bit longer but ironically they were the ones who conceded the only goal.

The rules of replays – which team learns more and which has most room to improve – are harder to interpret in this given the foul conditions and nervousness all around during the draw but it does appear that Galway have more to regret, having led by two in the closing minutes on a day when such a lead had the feel of an investment.

As to who learned the most, the suspicion is that the starting line-outs will be the key to determining that rather than the sides initially named.

Roscommon were also pleased with how unexpectedly well they had coped at centrefield against Tom Flynn, scorer of the vital goal against Mayo, and June Footballer of the Month, Paul Conroy. This was of course helped by the conditions, which persuaded both teams to go predominantly short on the restarts – a tactic which didn't allow Galway to optimise their strength in the area and surprisingly so after half-time with a howling wind at their backs – but nonetheless Niall Daly's performance against the elements in the second-half was impressively influential.

Kevin Walsh's team weren't though without their own consolations after losing the late lead. They had started poorly and did well to recover the initiative.

On a day which suited no one, least of all their sprightly forwards, Galway still got a sharp performance from Danny Cummins, who helped himself to three points and the RTÉ Man of the Match award.

The weather should be better on Sunday and this means improvement from both teams. It remains really difficult to call.

Roscommon should have taken more out of the circumstances of the draw and they have the more impressive looking substitute bench.

Galway, however, have room to improve, which primarily concerns their centrefield but there was also more cut to their attack.

More significantly they managed to impose their own system on the match, restricting Roscommon's opportunities but also finding decent attacking positions at the other end to compile their total.

Their greater practice with this set-up means they will have less difficulty replicating the strategy.

They just about remain favourites

[seafoid]

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/connacht-rugby-losing-jarlath-fallon-was-galway-s-gain-1.2723711

Connacht rugby losing Jarlath Fallon was Galway's gain

Former goalkeeper Derek Thompson hopes Roscommon can return to winning cycle after he broke it in 1998


Warren Gatland may have found himself on the wrong side of public opinion in Ireland from time to time over the years, but there is one part of Ireland that should forever hail the antipodean master of the pre-match soundbite because, if it wasn't for him, Galway might never have won the All-Ireland football final in 1998.

As it was, the then-Connacht rugby coach never did manage to secure the signature of a young rugby player on his radar called Jarlath Fallon. Ja went back to the Galway footballers, and ended the year with a Connacht title, an All-Ireland medal and an All-Star award.

Roscommon have cause to rue Gatland's change of heart, because they had their foot on the throat of Fallon and that Galway team twice in '98, drawing the Connacht final in Tuam, before only losing to a freak goal in extra-time in the replay. And as the final whistle blew last Sunday, many minds no doubt wandered back 18 years to a similarly foul Galway summer's day when the two counties played out a dour draw that ended level after a late free (Roscommon's Donie Smith doing the honours last week, Neil Finnegan hitting the late leveller for Galway in 1998).

Star man
That replay – the last Connacht final replay before Sunday's game in Castlebar – on a beautiful summer's evening in Roscommon in front of a crowd of almost 30,000, would turn out to be the making of Galway, and the making of their star man. Fallon had spent the previous winter playing for Galwegians in Division Two of the AIL, and he had done enough to catch the eye of the provincial coach, a little-known Kiwi by the name of Warren Gatland.
"Looking back on my rugby days, I probably fell between two stools a little bit, between the amateur and professional eras. Back in 1993 I got a few caps for Connacht, I went to an interpros series in Scotland, which was the beginnings of the idea of a Celtic League I suppose. I was tinkering with it for a couple of years after that, but I gave it one big year in 1997."

Fallon was good enough in that 1997/'98 rugby season to think seriously about ditching Gaelic football, despite the fact he was already a Connacht-title winning captain of Galway, and an All-Star from 1995.

'Full-time contract'
"I was hoping for a full-time contract, but I only got offered a part-time contract by Gatland, so in the end I turned it down. If I'd gotten offered a full-time contract for the year I would definitely have taken it. I was only back in with Galway three weeks before the Mayo game but we played two challenge games, and I played two halves – against Longford and Cork. There was a spot there at number 12, and I snuck in."
Galway went to Castlebar in May and beat hot favourites Mayo, who had lost the previous two All-Ireland finals. They defeated Leitrim in the Connacht semi-final, before drawing with Roscommon, 11 points apiece in Tuam. Fallon was feeling his way back into form, before he finally caught fire in the replay in Roscommon.

He scored five points from play that day, but it was a shot of his that dropped short in extra-time that would prove to be the decisive moment. It was a weak effort that was easily picked up by Roscommon goalkeeper Derek Thompson, but as he moved to hand-pass the ball to a colleague, it fell from his grasp and Michael Donnellan was on hand to blast it into an empty net.

Thompson remembers the drawn game and the replay as being the reason why he got interested in the game in the first place. "Going to Tuam, and playing in front of a huge crowd in the Hyde, that's what it was all about when you were a kid, playing these lovely provincial venues in the Connacht championship – all the history and everything.

"We all go back and blame [the referee] Séamus Prior for the decision to award Galway that free in the closing moments. But, no more than last Sunday, everyone wanted to see both teams go at it again in better weather after the drawn game in Tuam."

They did indeed go at it again in the Hyde, and played out a dramatic, physical, end-to-end tussle that could have gone either way. It finished 1-17 to 0-17 after extra time, and Fallon remembers a much-improved Galway performance that still wasn't enough to shake off Roscommon.

'Serious outfit'
"It was typical Roscommon, huge physicality, all go, and really put us to the pin of our collar. They were a serious outfit. If there was a back door they would have been there or thereabouts. It's easy to be wise now but I suppose looking back on it we had Michael Donnellan and Padraic Joyce, who became some of the best players of their generation, and maybe Roscommon didn't have players of that quality . . . sure who did?"
Thompson remembers it pretty much the same way. "As good as Galway played, we still wouldn't go away. All we needed was a shove to help us over the line . . ."

Instead, what Roscommon got was a stroke of bad luck. And 18 years later, Thompson is philosophical about the goal that decided the game.

"Roscommon people were great about it, but it was a defining moment, no doubt about it. I remember sitting on my couch late one night a few months later in Dublin watching the video, going through it frame by frame trying to figure out what happened.

"It's what people always want to talk about. The RTÉ coverage started with it on Sunday of course, and a few people around me were annoyed about that, saying would they ever leave it alone . . . but of course they're going to show it. That's the moment that decided the game and, if there's a draw in 10 years' time, they'll use it again, it's only natural."

As he says himself, the events of the last couple of months have fairly put it in perspective. Thompson woke one night in March at 4am, "having a full belt of a heart attack, at 44 years of age, so that wasn't on the cards. An hour and 20 minutes after the ambulance was called, I had two stents put in at the Mater, so life has changed a bit for me now. I'm back to work but I'll be slowing down and minding myself."

The feeling that 1998 was a missed opportunity won't go away. "When Galway won the All-Ireland there was certainly a feeling that it could've been us. We wouldn't have feared Derry in the semi-final, and getting to play Kildare – the Dermot Early connection, there would've been massive nostalgia. Ros last won an All-Ireland in 1944, then 18 years after that we got to a final, in 1962. Eighteen years after that we got back to another final, in 1980. So who broke the 18-year cycle after that only myself. And now its 18 years since '98, so who knows . . ."

Family connection
For Ja, there's a family connection to the team that lines out in Castlebar on Sunday – his first cousin Gary O'Donnell is captain. "He's come up the hard way – grew up in Gort, a hurling town really, and he's gotten plenty of criticism over the years too but to be made captain by his peers is such a huge honour. It would be great for him, 21 years after I did it myself, to captain a Connacht title-winning team."

[From the Bunker]

Jez Seafoid, you are really living in the past. The last 8 years have been some nightmare for you. Cafe Del Mar must be worn out in the last month?

[seafoid]

Jez Seafoid, you are really living in the past. The last 8 years have been some nightmare for you. Cafe Del Mar must be worn out in the last month?

I thought the Rossies would be interested in a bit of analysis. They aren't usually featured on the sports pages in the summer.

I think Mayo need a bit of lifted by the Lighthouse family.  Or else I believe I can fly.

[Farrandeelin]

For God's sake seasick will ya get a job a woman or a man if that's your thing

He's outsyfíning Syfín at this stage but at least Syfín is not 11 or 12
I'm still of the view it's 50/50 and will depend on things like who learned the most last day or who's improved more. There's also the bounce if a ball, mistakes or a Ref's decision.
All to play for.
UP ROS!!!!

Would agree with your assessment Rossfan. I still can't predict one way or the other. The weather was so bad the last day, I'm not sure either could learn much to be honest.

[An Fhairche Abu]

I'm just thankful that barring another draw after ET we can all move on to another match thread and get out of this absolute mess of whataboutery.

[Syferus]

I'm just thankful that barring another draw after ET we can all move on to another match thread and get out of this absolute mess of whataboutery.

It'll be yer last one of the year so make it count.

[seafoid]

I'm just thankful that barring another draw after ET we can all move on to another match thread and get out of this absolute mess of whataboutery.

It'll be yer last one of the year so make it count.

Have you a parent from Tipperary?

[seafoid]

The only time I recall Syf's cocksuredness being vindicated was when Brigids won the all Ireland. The sad thing in Connacht is that all the population dynamics are with Galway. 2 people I know at home migrated from Castlerea. 

[PW Nally]

I'm just thankful that barring another draw after ET we can all move on to another match thread and get out of this absolute mess of whataboutery.

It'll be yer last one of the year so make it count.

Have you a parent from Tipperary?

Have you a parent from Roscommon?

[barking mad]

The only time I recall Syf's cocksuredness being vindicated was when Brigids won the all Ireland. The sad thing in Connacht is that all the population dynamics are with Galway. 2 people I know at home migrated from Castlerea.

Tell the truth sea food they were released from castlerea to go back live in your estate.