Galway GAA Discussion Thread #2

Team named. Guessing Glennon is injured as he's featured in every game so far. Niland should take over free taking duties which should be an improvement on C. Cooney. Full forward line is where its at for Galway.

The amount of wides is ridiculous already. Game would be almost done and dusted with a bit more accuracy

Whelans hamstring injury looked high up the leg.

The slowest one to recover from!

Not the end of the world. A point in Wexford is ok.

A lot will be learnt from today. Driving the ball into the forwards when we are outnumbered is madness

No luck towards the end ... Ref a complete joker.

Well Shefflin did the same thing throughout the league. What makes you think he's going to learn anything. As I said previously, he played and was successful in a team that won its own ball up front and seems to think its the way the game should be played.

Time has moved on. The game is vastly different and possession is truly valued now. Unfortunately I don't think Shefflin has copped on to this yet and will continue to do it as he thinks it's the right way to play. It also ignores the fact that the forward lines of those kilkenny teams loved that kind of ball and many were vastly superior to some of the forwards we had on the pitch today.

I wouldn't be as downbeat as some of the others on here. It's criminal to lose a 6 point lead like that but momentum is huge in hurling and there is no doubt that the ref got caught up in that momentum. It was very harsh blowing up cooney like that for the free.

So many of our young players had good games which is another step in their development. The ball into Whelan and Concannon was very good in the first half and they were excellent. Galway won't have those wides anywhere else - the wind was changing direction all game. You could see even wexford struggled and they are used to it!

I would like to see us stop that Puck out routine of Murphy to Burke and back to Murphy for him to puck it long anyway. We seem to get more joy going direct to the half forward line and Murphy is well able to pick a pass.

Biggest worry imo is our forward subs.

Exactly. Long ball in, in front of the front 2, worked excellently in the first half and had the WX FB line in knots. Wasn't as good in the second when it was going in a bit too high. The main downer from yesterday was how the HF line disappeared very much so after the break. Conor as usual was hot and cold while Fahy and Niland were completely out of it - why did it take so long to change them? Our subs were largely ineffectual because they had so little time to make an impact. As good as our midfielders were, I think they don't defend so well, while no. 6 still bears scrutiny. Need to rejig it for the weeks ahead I think.

Is Shefflin just very slow to make subs, or just not much on the bench for him ?

Wexford used subs much better

I think he's just not a very good manager. We went through 80 odd minutes yesterday and nothing changed tactically in the entire game no matter whether we were on top or on the back foot. Anyone that did come in was purely to fit into an existing system and wasn't designed to ask different questions of the opposition.

Once we were 20mins in wexford knew what we were about and began closing off the areas we were hurting them. We never reacted to that and to be quite honest I'm surprised we got as much joy as we did for as long as we did with wexford conceding the short puck out. They gave us that advantage the entire match yet we never went through the lines to draw out the defence or pick off scores at range.

I must be very optimistic because I thought the performance was much better than I expected! Galway controlled most of the game and just couldn't see it out as Wexford subs hada bigger impact than Galway.

Clueless ball in? For about 15 mins at the beginning of the second half I agree as Whelan and Concannon retreated out the pitch and no one filled the gap inside which ended with some aimless ball bring hit in which was very frustrating. Other than that I thought Whelan/Concannon worked brilliantly inside together and had Wexford in a lot of trouble. I was sitting at the Galway attacking 21 in the first half and they were very in sync with their movements.

Like Wexford we aimed to win/lose the game with our full forward line so plenty of ball played in long from both teams. Thought our full back line had a great game. Grealish/O' Connor had a great old fashioned battle. Daithí and Morrissey were equally strong. On another day McDonald doesn't get a second bite of the cherry for the goal.

With these positives Galway still were the architects of their own downfall. Think I had them marked for 10/11 wides after 20 odd mins (in both teams defence they breeze was a b***h swirling around) Whelan butchered a first half goal chance when put clean through and Joseph Cooney was selfish when should of been passing in the second.

Conor Cooney had a poor start (not sure it made sense him being on frees with Niland starting. Frees can help a player like Niland grow into a game) but Cooney set up the goal/point from play/ball winner and scored the rest of his Frees after the early misses. Thinks its unfair to put him in the poor category.

Niland and Fahy weren't in it much and subs little impact. Worry.

Overturned free at the end was a joke. End of. While the Wexford fans were quiet for most of it they were in full voice by the end and definitely influenced the ref. If the ref felt he was taking too long add the time on. How long did it take Fanning to saunter up to take the penalty? Longer than Cooney took I'd imagine. Massive decision to make and a terrible decision.

And what has he shown. Is this another Joyce situation where it takes two years for people to admit he's not up to much.

As a manager you're duty is to assess the players available to you and then create a game plan to suit the strengths of those players. There should be a clear development and direction to that plan and also the ability to have a secondary gameplan to use when your main plan isn't working.

Imo the gameplan doesn't suit the players and it hasn't changed or developed one iota since the start of the league. We'll see more of the same in the next few games. It will be enough to dispatch the lesser teams and we'll struggle against KK and Dublin. We played long ball against Dublin before and they ate us. KK love it too.

Sadly, hearing some very tragic news in camogie circles this morning. Thoughts and prayers with all families concerned.