Galway GAA Discussion Thread #2

shouldn’t risk the likes of comer, kelly or Walsh on Sunday.let the younger lads have a go at winning Connaught.

Win or lose it will stand to them. Potentially seven games left after Sunday…….a big and fit panel needed.

Mayo wouldnt have beaten Dublin even with a Months break

Even if they had Paddy Joe😉

Strongest team/bench in a long time. Think it's down to McDaid and Tomo missing along with the two lads travelling.

Whichever way it goes a good few of these need minutes. So hopefully things can improve (drastically) in the coming weeks.

Maher and D'Arcy makes me think we won't see much inventiveness off the tee for restarts.....

On the flip side is if Mayo do do thier press for restarts (which the are very good at) and Glesson bombs long with Galway dominating the skies it does give a platform for moving forward quickly with little cover (ala Donegal vs Derry)

Mayo team/bench is as strong as they are so it's a huge ask in my eyes but you never know. These games can take on a life of their own.

If we make it to a quarter final (provisional quarter final) with everyone fit and minutes under their belt thats as much as I hope for. Win Sunday would be great but the first part is the most important.

I dunno about Mayo's scoring power off the bench. Two O'Connor's only but maybe Cillian might get a point or two.

That's fair. Lack of pace has been a big problem for Galway alright

On present form Antrim might deliver the knock out blow. Either way it's the end of the line for Shefflin and a number of the older players.

U20 lose at home to Ros, turning into a poor weekend

Unfortunately, can't see it getting any better tomorrow!

Roscommon with much better game plan and tactics. Galway looked clueless. Surely there are proper coaches out there that can be put in besides ex players getting the gigs

We certainly have as good quality as wexford have so that's no excuse. The same stuff was said before we got two good coaches in, in Cunningham and Donoghue. They played to the players strengths and we were in the mix for a decade but instead of backing Donoghue the CB cheaped out and McDonagh went on a solo run with Shefflin.

Backing a guy just on the back of his playing record is a bad bet as we've seen in both codes. Its time to put proper coaches back in charge that know how to get the best out of the players they have, rather than trying to force their idea of how they should play on to a team that's unsuited to that style. Neither team look like they want to play for their manager and that's never going to end well.

This is the annoying thing though, we do have the hurlers. Looking at our front 8 today, there are plenty of teams who would love to have those names. I know we lost Mannion but that team was well capable of putting up a big score on Wexford. We just didn’t show up and we have too many days or half’s where we just don’t show up.

Mannion needs to be explained. He did the full warm up. Wasn't replaced on the bench by one of the four standbys but saw no action? I

There’s no 2 ways about it, that was an absolutely disgraceful performance. Team lacked any sort of fight or cohesion or semblance of a game plan.

The insistence on playing a short passing style is just killing them. The players don’t have the skills or the decision making to execute the right pass to the right player at the right time to be able to play that style. The amount of short passes given to a player under pressure was crazy.

What makes this even worse is Whelan and Concannon looked pretty dangerous inside when the ball was hit in direct. But they were starved of decent supply for most of the game.

It was very noticeable that the team struggled to win 50/50s all through the game. They were flat. It’s a cliche but it really did seem Wexford “wanted it more”.

The team selection is often baffling too. Can anyone offer an explanation as to why Daithi Burke and Padraic Mannion, 2 of the best in the country at full and wing back respectively have basically swapped positions for the entire period of Henry’s reign? Don’t get me wrong both are fine in their new positions but no one will tell me the team wasn’t setup better with Daithi at 3 and Padraic at 5.

We are now 3 years into Henry’s reign and most days we go out it’s guesswork as to who will play at 3,6,8,9 & 11. That’s the entire spine of the team and we’ve none of the positions properly nailed down.

We started against Kilkenny without a intercounty standard free taker. Crazy.

Some of Shefflins behaviour on the line yesterday was embarrassing. The yellow card for going ballistic over a clear free being given against Concannon was absolutely pathetic carry on.

The points in relation to the teams playing style, the lack of fight, the team selection and his conduct on the sideline I lay firmly at Henry’s door.
I make no bones about it, I want him removed from his position asap but I appreciate it’s more likely to happen after this season. It really annoyed me the way the county board begged him to stay on for a third season despite barely winning a meaningful game in his first 2 seasons. His record is virtually identical to Shane O’Neills and he was removed. What’s the difference? Oh yes one was a superstar player.

However my final point is perhaps the biggest reason for our downfall and it’s one we can’t blame Shefflin for. Since the 2017 all Ireland win the only player to break through and establish himself as a top class intercounty player is Brian Concannon. Brian is 27 now. Where are all the 19-26 year olds and why can’t they establish themselves in the team? They just seem totally incapable of making an impression at intercounty level. The 09 and 11 all Ireland winning minor teams basically provided the backbone of our team for a decade but apart from that we have been spectacularly bad at converting star minor players into top class senior players despite plenty of success at minor.