Galway GAA discussion thread

Borders no.2 wrote: »

Problem I have is that Davy Glennon was very good yesterday but he got a lot of ball yesterday he wouldn't normally get. He won a number of balls unopposed. Come an intense game where midfield is crowded I can't see him being a success out there.

In the 2nd half we moved Tannian inside where he simply isn't able to cover the ground. Ok he got the goal but that was more luck than design and he is most definitely not the solution come summer time.

David Burke did well at 6 but is he the long term solution and are we robbing ourselves of his presence at midfield? Joe Cooney was offered as the solution at 6 after a man of the match display against Kilkenny in the first league game in 2013 but it became obvious pretty quickly after that he wasn't. He did well yesterday but we have to see a lot more to see is he a potential answer at 6.

I'd have big concerns about us in the middle sector and our ability to win ball in the half forward line. For all their critics Donnellan and Glynn are our own reliable outlets on puck outs without bringing Canning out. Niall Burke knocked over some excellent points in the 2nd half but he's not going to win the possession we need from puck outs.

Everywhere you look we were robbing Peter to pay Paul yesterday. Looking at other areas, we have Johnny Coen and Padraic Mannion to come back in, fair enough. I don't know what's going on with Conor Cooney but hopefully we get him back and get some games. He is much needed in that forward line.

Yesterday's game was like playing a better version of Cork, loose hurling, plenty of quality scores, both sides giving it a go but it didn't have the white heat of battle like we'll see against Waterford on Sunday. I don't see that team as it lined up yesterday coming out on top when it comes to a battle. The number of balls we lost on breaking ball or on the floor particularly in the first half was atrocious.

2nd half was better but for me we have a lot of work to do in the months ahead to bring ourselves to where we need to be for championship.

Re Glennon would have to agree, i think he's fine in loose/open play however when the middle 3rd packs up and bigger hits come in he will struggle. Have seen him get turned over quite a bit in tight situations where he cant break thru oncoming tacklers which Tannion would of done in his prime. In last years AI when the likes of Michael Fennelly turn the game in to a scrap in midfield, I cant see Glennon being able for the rough and tumble like that. He may well be worth a place somewhere but not midfield. I saw Cathal Mannion playing around midfield yesterday and also for same reasons I wouldnt have him in middle third, better deployed closer to goal IMO.

Re no. 6 position, David Burke will not be playing there come the summer. All Star midfielder and and was our outstanding player last September. Serious lack of experimentation so far this year and the league is nearly done. After Lally getting injured would of been good to see someone who realistically will play there have a run. Wonder has anyone new been brought in, is Shane Cooney from last years u21's in the squad?

cosatron wrote: »

Agree with everything Border. God I thought I was alone in thinking that burke isn't a center back, yes he gets on a nice bit of ball but he won't go up a pull a ball down out of the sky and for me that essential when playing no.6. The last point for tipp was telling, it was a long puck out by Gleeson and burke had his moment to make his presence felt by catching the ball and winning the game for Galway but went up and batted the ball down and it was recycled by tipp and bubbles down the rest. Compare that with all the great center backs, they would of caught it. plus his best position is midfield and he was surely missed from there on sunday.

Ya Burke isn't great in the air in fairness but I still think he can make a fine centre back. We have to accept that whoever we put in there will have their flaws (well unless we play Canning there but he's obviously needed further up the pitch). Someone like Cooney or Tan would offer better presence than Burke but they give up way too much in terms of mobility.

Aside from his lack of aerial ability I think Burke can do a job there, good to cover the ground, brave, great touch and superb striker and distributor of the ball. I think based on last Sunday we have to give him another chance there. He is a better midfielder but I think centre back is a more important position on the field and I think he's needed there for the moment.

I think the fact that Donoghue only got appointed just before Christmas and they only got down to training as a panel together in mid January after a team holiday mitigated against a lot of experimentation being done during the league. They were already starting back a month or more behind the other teams so it was probably the right call not to change too much too quickly.

Diabhal Beag wrote: »

If we really get down to it I don't think this Galway side would stick Division 1 even if they got promoted. They blow away leads, bomb wides, throw games away with an extra man and have calamitous exchanges between the backs nearly every single game. There's not a team in the country that can drop guaranteed points in the waiting arms of the goalkeeper quite like Galway. At least with the Meath and Armagh games they made admirable comebacks but this one was a sour one.

Certainly well below the standard of division 1. They will be like down this year if they are promoted. I have ways disliked the whole north v west Galway thing. But I have to wonder about the bias being shown to west Galway at the moment, particulary Walshs own club. To me, it's extremely concerning to see more kilanin than corofin players on the county panel.

Diabhal Beag wrote: »

There's truth to that but at the same time I'd be lying if I said I knew what the story is with the Corofin contingent. Certainly the Burkes, Farraghers and Steede showed enough to warrant slots this year and McGrath was hard done by with his lengthy injury in the past. Our bench in the League tends to flatter come championship too with lads coming back from Winter injuries over the course of 7 games. Depth is always a major issue.

Yeah I don't know the deal with corofin players either. But there were 5 Kilanin players on the Galway panel today. When you see a club having that amount of players in a county panel, you'd expect them to be competing at all Ireland level. But kilanin are not even made any significant impact at Galway senior level recently! It just reeks of favouritism and bias to me.

Today's result no surprise whatsoever as Galway yet again are pressing up hard against their performance and achievement ceiling. With the exception of Shane Walsh (WHY was he subbed at half-time?) and Conroy on a good day (and while not immune from criticism, he's been one of their best players in this league), there's probably no-one else on the squad that you could say would get on to any other team in the country. Our current goalie is error-prone, FB line useless, (sadly no. 3, Kyne, is going to get an absolute cleaning sometime in early summer), HB line slightly less so; further out, O'Curraoin, Flynn and Hoare have now seemingly reached their limit, which is far too low. Ditto the Sweeneys, Danny Cummins and Adrian Varley. Sice is one of our more reliable performers but he's gone 30. By dint of the absences of Lundy, Duane and O'Griofa, the team is worse this year. Rightly or wrongly, the reason I heard the Corofin players wouldn't go (or stay) in was because they weren't impressed with the training set-up which was inferior to their own club's. A pity, because the Farraghers and Steede are in general better then the likes of Flynn and Hoare.

It's not the mgmt's fault in general that players of quality aren't available to them. The Football Board haven't helped either; they didn't put up much of a fight when Croke Park told them they had to re-jig the league so that teams could only be relegated through the c'ship. The old format with 16 Senior (2x8) and 16 Intermediate (2x8) teams was clearly defined and in general meant that all league games were relevant. Now, few clubs care about the leagues, and thanks in part to Corofin's dominance, the c'ship is largely poor and uncompetitive. A group-style c'ship a-la the hurling would at least be a step in the right direction.

However, the mgmt stand indicted a good bit for today's result. After 1 minute of the second half Galway led by 3 in fortress Tuam, were largely assisted by the breeze, were playing very ordinary opponents who would shortly be down to 14 men and who in 7 previous league meetings had lost every one of them to Galway, and still they contrived to be hanging on a bit in the end. Too slow to change non-performing players, and I don't know what they were practicing in Portugal, but defensive cohesion wasn't apparently part of it. They'd have been better off in Portarlington. Just so ordinary all round. I'm ambivalent of their possible promotion; playing against the best teams would undoubtedly improve some of the players, but the current squad would get killed, really, really slaughtered in Division 1.

Positives are that the result doesnt change things one iota, we still need to beat Cavan. The others are Shane Walsh and Damien Comer who are going to be cracking footballers provided they keep their interest in the game.

Negatives? Goalkeeper is a disaster. Thought we has seen the light with Thomas Dolan but he's injured now and we're back to this rubbish again. Short kickouts are certainly the way to go but the execution was laughable. Half back line arent absolved from blame either, serious lack of movement. How we couldnt routinely win our kickout short with Fermanagh down to 14 and basically conceding the kickout is astounding.

Galway actually went to pieces with the extra man and management has to take the blame for that. They completely lost shape and the advatage was completely nullified. Conroy is slowly becoming Joe Bergin. On the on days he looks one of the best midfielders in the country. On the off days (becoming frequent) he's a disaster. Again its up to management to rectify that and perhaps move him into FF on the days where its not working out at midfield. With all the short kickouts there's no need to have O'Currain there, he offers little outside of aerially. Better off to have a runner like Bradshaw in there. Flynn's had a good league but was poor yesterday. Sice was ok. Off day for everyone else, especially O'Donnell, Varley and Heaney.

Optimistic that they can show something next week and their record against northern teams is good generally. Yesterday was depressing though. Massive game ahead, really high time Galway started mixing it with the likes of Dublin and Kerry on a regular basis again. Even from a selfish supporters point of view, would be great to get matches like that next year.

Borders no.2 wrote: »

Being honest I have bigger issues than how many players from Kilannin are on the Galway panel. The Sweeneys and Johnny Heaney are all good footballers.

Perhaps I am being a bit unfair on Kilannin (and I made a typo - there were 4, not 5 on the panel the last day). However, my point still stands. If these players are so good, why haven't they made any impact on the club championship in recent years?

Lets look at the last 5 county finals:
2015 Corofin 3-13 Mountbellew/Moylough 0-12
2014 Corofin 5-12 St. Michael's 0-9
2013 Corofin 2-13 Salthill-Knocknacarra 0-7
2012 Salthill-Knocknacarra 0-12 Tuam Stars 0-7
2011 Corofin 0-16 Tuam Stars 1-6

From these 5 clubs, I think the only representatives are:
Liam Silke, Gary Sice, Eddie Hoare, Eamon Brannigan, Gary O'Donnell.

Lets extend this out to the semi-finalists of the past 3 years. You have the following clubs:
Corofin, Mountbellew, Cortoon, Salthill, Milltown, Barna, St. James.
From these clubs, I think its just the following (very possible I am forgetting somebody here):
Liam Silke, Gary Sice, Eddie Hoare, Eamon Brannigan, Gary O'Donnell, Adrian Varley, Paul Conroy, Finisn Hanley

8/26 from arguably the top clubs in Galway over the last 3 years (I know there is an argument that these have not been the best clubs, i.e. Barna!). However, I think it is interesting that the guys who have performed best at club level are not being picked at county level. I know that there can be many reasons why they are not picked - somebody mentioned the
Corofin guys having an issue with management. Probably there are a number of guys who can perform at club level that just dont have
the temperment or commitment for county level. However, I know I have seen players for Mountbellew, Milltown & Salthill that were equally
deserving of a shot as some of the current players on the panel. I have seen less of Barna and James in the past few years so dont know their players as well.

Looking at Galway's players the last day, of the 15 starters, Breathnach, Kyne, Wynne, Flynn all play intermediate football. Of the subs that came on, Cummins & Bradshaw also play at intermediate level. While I am not advocating that intermediate players are overlooked (that would be totally illogical and I am sure that there are many examples of good inter-county intermediate players in the past), this seems to be a high proportion of the panel. I would love to compare this to Mayo & Roscommon to see if their ratio of non-senior players is similar.

MfMan wrote: »

Today's result no surprise whatsoever as Galway yet again are pressing up hard against their performance and achievement ceiling. With the exception of Shane Walsh (WHY was he subbed at half-time?) and Conroy on a good day (and while not immune from criticism, he's been one of their best players in this league), there's probably no-one else on the squad that you could say would get on to any other team in the country.

Walsh or Conroy would not get on any other team. Walsh is very talented but he has struggled to nail down a place on a very average Galway team for the last 2 years. That would not suggest he is very well placed to compete for in the likes of a Dublin (even Mayo) team.

Damien Comer is the one player we have at the moment that could potentially make most other teams. He would make the Mayo forward line for example. He carries such a goal threat that I think he would make any other team, except for Dublin.

This goalkeeper issue is a non issue, one bad kickout and he has to go? Let's get a grip. We have no movement for kickouts, doesn't matter who is in goals if we have no movement. Dolan kickouts were poor in his two games, especially against Tyrone. Saw Breathnach play in goal against athenry (Dolans club) last years championship and was one of best kicking displays I've seen from a keeper in club football especially when his team were against Tom Flynn and had no big lads in midfield themselves. I think if Galway had a half decent movement plan for kickouts that he could execute them. I agree that we need a runner midfield instead of another big fella.

MfMan wrote: »

Mmm.. Walsh was a c'ship mainstay in Mulholland's final year; 2015 was as we know injury-interrupted for him, when he came on (waaaay too late) v Donegal in CP, he promptly kicked one of the points of the year, a score no-one else in the squad would be capable of. I can understand why you mightn't rate Conroy so, but he does have a good bit of ability and is actually having quite a good league. He's just the type of player that e.g. Mayo would need, giving their lack of outright scorers. Comer is progressing nicely, but is not (yet) a prolific scorer and probably needs to learn to carry the ball with his head up and back straight, he's a bit too easily tumbled over at the moment.

I absolutely rate Conroy. Just don't think he would make any other team as you suggested. He wouldn't make the Dublin team. Probably wouldn't make Kerry. Could make the Mayo team in their half forward line - wouldn't make their midfield.

Walsh has been fully fit at times and not been selected by the current Galway management. He is still very much a player of potential rather than a player who has delivered. So I'd be very hesitant to say he can make any other team - let's see if he can actually regularly make our team first!

The one thing comer absolutely not is 'easily tumbled'. He has serious strength and is a monster to knock off the ball.