Gaillimh -v- Ros Comáin

[RedandGreenSniper]

I really don't know who Roscommon could actually beat in the qualifiers given that the Div 4 teams are going straight to Tommy Murphy once they lose. Perhaps the nine weeks will give them time but its hard to picture anything but two games and two defeats in championship for them

[INDIANA]

you're entitled to your delusions moysider, but to suggest that whelan would have trouble against either cullinane or lydon is like saying carlow had any chance against meath yesterday. the roving corner forward isn't employed by the top teams, because it doesn't work against good opposition. clancy is a good footballer, but he won't be allowed to win breaks against good opposition with the regularity like yesterday.
someone like keith higgins if he was marking clancy would probably score as much as clancy down the other end like tomas o se did on him against kerry. Galway have to get nicky joyce into the forward line somewhere ; he's too good to leave out. based on yesterday, mayo will fancy their chances especially mc garrity and co. if i was sammon, i'd play clancy in a conventional wing forward role and with nicky joyce in the corner. that would give galway a hell of a forward line, but it won't solve the midfield problems.

[GaillimhIarthair]

A decent enough win for the 1st championship game of the season although the first half WAS poor football.  Galway did enough to win comfortably and thats about it, but will need to improve and push on against Leitrim in four weeks time.  Excellent performance fom Mattie Clancy and a superb debut from Paul Conroy and these two were easily the pick of our side.  However poor Ros were on the day, they still showed up few flaws in teh Galway team -

Paul Doherty - needs to work on varying his kickouts more and not just boom everything straight down the middle.
Niall Coyne - went missing on a few occassions and left a big hole in the centre of defence.  Can and will improve.
Midfield - we know the issues here but Barry was lucky not to get the line yesterday and his timing for contesting kickouts was way off
Breathnach - bar his pass to Clancy for the goal, offers no scoring threat. Need to see Nicky back in here with Army pushing hard for a starting spot if he can sort out his injury problems.

[MaroonAndWhite]

You can only beat whats put in front of you and that was done fairly efficiently yesterday. Cullinane has his (many) limitations and Lydon is only starting out......its not as if they were up against a poor pairing in Mannion and O'Neill. Midfield, while a problem, is not something that cannot be worked around with variation of kickouts and getting some kind of system in place with midfield splitting and hitting the wings/wingbacks with the kicks. Lumping it straight down the middle is not an option Galway have at the moment but the keepers seem unaware of that at the moment.
Dont know or care how Whelan made his way into the argument but Cullinane is more effective on the pitch rather than Whelan is sitting in the stand twiddling his thumbs..... And for all Cullinane acted the eejit there yesterday, it seems to be conveniently forgotten that O'Neill is as big a culprit as anyone in these situations. But it seems that his behaviour is acceptable/overlooked in defeat
Nicky was not playing yesterday as he is only just back after a groin op.....he needs game time and will get that with club championship coming up next weekend. He will be ready and most likely play against Leitrim. Armstrong injured too.....he of the brittle hamstrings should be back too and Diarmuid Blake well on road to recovery after similar injury to Nicky
Bar the last 15 mins of 1st half when the Rossies hit a purple patch, Galway did all that was asked of them and they will improve with time. The main concern now is the amount of Mayo folk talking us up  
As for peoples rating of us, you will probably find that Galway posters on here are fairly reasonable in their comments....."alot done, more to do" springs to mind. But sure maybe everyone else will be the finished article after their first championship outing  

[ross matt]

O'Neill acted the clown on one or two occasions. Thats nothing new from Sheamie. More a danger to himself than anyone else. Cullinane was cynical and dirty and as was pointed out by the sunday game last night he shouldnt have been on the pitch for Cox to foul him in the 2nd half. That doesnt condone or excuse Cox either. For an experienced player he let his team down when they needed him most.

Re Galway midfield being compared to a "strong" Ross one. Karol is a full forward not a midfielder even though he did well there yesterday. O'Neill is only a pale shadow of the player he was in 2001-2003 and even though he's only 25-26 he may never get back to that level. Ross midfield yesterday are miles off the likes of Fergal Doherty, Ciaran Whelan, Darragh O'Se, Ronan McGarrity etc

[Rossie11]

When confidence of a team is low you need a lot of things to go well for you to make a game of it. They didnt.
We missed the goals in 1st half. Cox had to go but the ref was a joke in my opinion. Directly gifted galway at least 3 points from woeful decisions when game was in the balance. I didnt see the Cullinane incident to be honest.
Thought Joyce and Meehan were held as much as they can be but Clancy done the damage winning the breaking ball and attacking at pace.
We are badly missing a real leader at CHB since Grehan was dropped. Someone who will bury his man with a shoulder and give the team a lift. Dont hold out much hope for qualifiers to be honest. We need a win from somewhere but it going to take a huge effort to get it.

[SLIGONIAN]

Moysider, I know your a Mayoman, it doesnt suprise me how passionate you are at talking up this Galway team. But this Galway team is nothing to be feared. It was a piss poor performance yday and they know it. Sugar coat all they want. It was 6-4 at HT against a ros side devoid of any quality on the ball apart from glimpses from no 13.

This Galway team isnt a patch on the one that won all ireland in 2001. They have no finneagan, donnellan, joyce in his prime, savage, etc.. this young fellas arent even close to that. Walsh and o domhaill midfield. Only Meehan would get on that team and clancy maybe.

Even a Rossman came on and said hes suprised at the optimism of galway folk after that performance.

Im not convinced Galway will improve that much on that either. Leitrim will be a much tougher game and I wouldnt write them off based on what I saw yday.

Id be suprised if Galway went on to win connaght. Its Sligos and Mayos for the taking IMO now   that the standard in connaght is still sh*te.

[heineken_on_tap]

Firstly, fair play to Galway they were the better team. No one can argue with that. All this talk about how good/bad Galway are will be revealed on another day. IMO they are in the top 6 counties and so cannot be ruled out. I wasn't all that impressed with them alright but you simply cant judge Galway on yesterday's game - the second half was a non event. The answer wont be known until they play a quality side. I think that will possibly be Mayo in the connaught final. In saying that Leitrim will pose problems but ultimately Galway should have too much class.

I didn't leave Salthill in bad form yesterday, I knew we had no chance of winning. I saw some glimpses of improvement - infact if we had won the midfield battle in the second half I think our forwards had the beating of the Galway backs. However with Shine going off and Cox getting sent off we handed the initiative back to Galway. In fairness though, we had absolutely no luck at all from the goal misses to Shine hitting the post. 

While the referee was poor enough alright, our discipline at times was terrible. Some of our lads simply cannot tackle without fouling.
All and all while the score line suggests otherwise I would remain optimistic for the future. Obviously we are a massive way off the top teams but if the hard work continues hopefully in 3-4 years we can build a team which is competitive in connaught again.

This current team needs to win a few games and get some level of confidence back. Hopefully we will go on some sort of a run in the qualifiers and win a game or two.

[MaroonAndWhite]

Moysider, I know your a Mayoman, it doesnt suprise me how passionate you are at talking up this Galway team. But this Galway team is nothing to be feared. It was a piss poor performance yday and they know it. Sugar coat all they want. It was 6-4 at HT against a ros side devoid of any quality on the ball apart from glimpses from no 13.

This Galway team isnt a patch on the one that won all ireland in 2001. They have no finneagan, donnellan, joyce in his prime, savage, etc.. this young fellas arent even close to that. Walsh and o domhaill midfield. Only Meehan would get on that team and clancy maybe.

Even a Rossman came on and said hes suprised at the optimism of galway folk after that performance.

Im not convinced Galway will improve that much on that either. Leitrim will be a much tougher game and I wouldnt write them off based on what I saw yday.

Id be suprised if Galway went on to win connaght. Its Sligos and Mayos for the taking IMO now   that the standard in connaght is still sh*te.

Im fairly sure I speak for most Galwegians when I say we await with baited breath Sligo -v- Mayo on June 22 when the reigning Connacht champions come charging out of the blocks with their customary champagne football 

[GallBoss]

Looking at the Galway bench yetserday how in the hell was Tomas Hughes and Conor Healy on the bench..1 Hughes couldn't even make the U21s and Healy for me has never even shone for Salthill so how does he get on the panel. Its a bit of a insult to genuine club players in my opinion.

[mouview]

This was by far Galway's best championship opener in, er, 12 months. Like last year, it was a case of the oppostion being poor rather than the home side being good. (Beware of the hype-machine being driven by GBFM and OTT!) I don't like saying it but Ros' were simply dire - it must be really dispiriting for their good support to have to watch some of yesterday's stuff. As for Galway, it's not that the players have improved much but that the style has - kudos to Sammon for that. However the weaknesses at midfield remain, though I thought Big Bad BC wasn't as bad as some would suggest - again he mostly tried to win primary possession and lay it off as soon as he could. Breathnach huffed and puffed and didn't do much. Matt Clancy; typical, I spend the year giving out about him and he goes and scores 1-3 from play. His lack of composure on the ball is still evident though (see first half) and in many ways is symptomatic of Galway in general - good against lesser opposition but found wanting when the quality is stepped up. Nothing against the lad, he's a good honest player, but only when he scores 1-3 against the likes of Tyrone, Kerry or Dublin can we say that Galway will have improved significantly. Beware also of those (Anthony Davis) who say Galway have a strong subs bench; not really - Bane came on yesterday and did very little, somewhat typically making a smather of one of the 2 good chances he got. The good bits from yesterday were the performance of Doherty in goal, Coyne at CHB (not too bad) and the enduring class of PJ all through. A Connacht (!)  final in C'bar will be a good examination of where Galway are at present.

[MaroonAndWhite]

Looking at the Galway bench yetserday how in the hell was Tomas Hughes and Conor Healy on the bench..1 Hughes couldn't even make the U21s and Healy for me has never even shone for Salthill so how does he get on the panel. Its a bit of a insult to genuine club players in my opinion.

Dont know Healy.....but pray tell how is Tomas Hughes not a "genuine" club player? And yes, im from Killererin before you ask. I would have thought that one of the midfielders from the county champions who pretty much dominated most of the midfield partnerships they came up against could be considered a "genuine" club player?

[magpie seanie]

This was by far Galway's best championship opener in, er, 12 months. Like last year, it was a case of the oppostion being poor rather than the home side being good

I think in a nutshell thats what I'd be saying too. There's no doubt - Galway have class players who can do serious damage if given time and space. However, at best the jury is still out on Galways prospects this year. I suppose all counties bar a few notable exceptions get carried away with a good result, not leat my own. After all - those who know what they're talking about are always in the vast minority come championship time. We will know a lot more about Galway after they play Leitrim.

[AZOffaly]

Where is the Galway - Leitrim game? If it's up in Carrick, Galway will have a right battle on their hands. If it's in Galway, I'd expect Leitrim to stick with them for 40 minutes or so, but Galway to pull away.

PS> I know conditions were nightmare yesterday. Hard ground + Rain = Greasy ball and embarrassment, but how poor was Ros' handling? In the first 20-25 minutes they couldn't hold a thing, and Galway didn't seem to be half as troubled by it.

[magpie seanie]

AZ - its in Salthill. They played in Carrick last year.