Sports
Late Manning penalty secures win for Galway FC
Galway FC manager Tommy Dunne was a relieved man in St Colman’s Park on Saturday night after his side snatched an injury time winner against Cobh Ramblers.
Ryan Manning converted a 96th minute penalty to make it five wins on the bounce for Dunne’s side, and while the manager was delighted to have taken all three points, there was little else by way of celebration when he spoke to Sentinel Sport.
“My head is wrecked. We didn’t play well at all. We score with a great goal, all we have to do is keep a clean sheet and go home, forget about everything else, but some of our decision making regarding balls going forward was poor.
“I think some of these guys need to learn about closing out games. Sometimes it doesn’t have to be pretty, that’s a car park out there, the pitch, it’s desperate, but I said to the lads I think we deserved that bit of luck because over the year, we hadn’t got much,” he said.
While his side have rightly been praised all season for trying to get the ball down and work it up the pitch, some games require more of a route one approach, and Dunne admitted Saturday was one such instance.
“We have drilled ourselves as a football team not to be whacking it up the pitch, but I’m telling the lads tonight to go long, which is completely foreign to them all season. You have to do that as balls are kicking up around your neck – on a normal pitch you tell them to do what we do, but tonight you had to change your tactics in a sense.
“Their goal comes from a set-piece that was caused, not so much by dilly-dallying, but by not putting your boot through the ball when it’s needed, but we take the three points and we move on to the next matches,” he said.
There are two games to go in the regular season, and while Longford Town’s win over Waterford United on Friday night means the title is now beyond Galway FC, they can still not only secure a play-off spot, but the added bonus of having home advantage in the second-leg by overtaking Shelbourne in the table.
Shels lost 3-2 away to Finn Harps on Friday night, and they host Galway FC in Tolka Park this Friday night with a three point cushion over Dunne’s side, but an inferior goal difference of +16 compared to Galway FC’s +24, so Galway FC will overtake them with a win on the northside of Dublin.
While Wexford Youths are technically still in the play-off hunt – until tonight at least, when anything less than a win over Finn Harps will end their hopes – the two sides likely to meet in that two-leg encounter will be Galway FC and Shelbourne.
So in one way, Friday’s game will be the start of the two-leg promotion play-off between the sides, as whichever team wins on Friday night will have a massive psychological boost over the other ahead of the play-offs.
The team that finishes third will be at home on Friday October 17, before travelling to the home of the second-placed team on Friday October 24. The winners of that two-leg play-off will meet the side that finishes 11th in the Premier Division over two legs on Monday October 27 and Friday October 31, with a draw to be made to see who has home advantage in the second leg.
The Galway United Supporters Trust will be running a bus to Friday’s game in Tolka Park. The bus will depart from The Dáil Bar on Middle Street at 4pm and seats can be booked by contacting Ronan Coleman at (087) 6972823 or Dominick Walsh at (087) 9163438.
Ollie Horgan says Galway United will need to play much better than they did last Friday if they are to take anything from their trip to early-season surprise packets Cobh Ramblers this Friday (5pm).
United set a club record by scoring nine goals in a game for the first time when thrashing league newcomers Kerry FC in Eamonn Deacy Park last Friday, but despite that jaw-dropping scoreline, Horgan wasn’t happy with how the side played and he warned that players will have to up their game in St Colman’s Park this coming St Patrick’s Day.
“Obviously we got goals, but we didn’t play particularly well. I know it sounds crazy in what I’m saying, but we got off to a very good start and I think had we not broken them down early, it would have been a completely different story.
“We didn’t keep the ball well, I actually thought we played better in Waterford [ a week earlier], and obviously against a better side we scraped through 1-0.
“I think the fact we scored a lot of goals and created a lot of chances is the positive, but we are quite realistic that we are going to a team that is up at the top of the table, away from home that is a hugely difficult place to go with what Cobh has,” said Horgan.
Horgan who was the main man in the United dugout again on Friday as John Caulfield served the final of a three-game ban for being sent-off at half-time against Finn Harps on the opening night of the season.
Horgan subsequently picked up a yellow card against Waterford; and new coach, Chris Collopy, found this way into the referee’s notebook last Friday, so that propensity for talking their way into trouble might be something United need to look at.
Not too much else has gone wrong for United so far this season, however; any niggling concern over the failure of United’s attacking payers to find the net were blown away on Friday with Ed McCarthy bagging a hat-trick, Stephen Walsh and Ibrahim Keita both scoring twice, and Francely Lomboto getting off the mark for the season as well.
It is understandable that Horgan wants to pull the handbrake on any notions of getting carried away with last Friday’s win – Kerry were embarrassingly naive, and while the win, and the manner of it, will fill United with confidence, they are making the trip south to another side high on confidence.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
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By Pádraic Ó Ciardha
In what has been a strange and toothless-enough National Hurling League Division One overall, this meeting of Galway and Clare in Ennis might go down as one of the odder matches.
On paper, Clare were the side with a shot at making a league semi-final and Galway were the ones with nothing to play for and that’s how it played out for the first 15 minutes with the Banner racing into a commanding lead.
After that, a switch somewhere flipped and it was Galway, and not without reason it must be said, who looked like the side with something to prove.
Speaking after his side’s 1-24 to 0-22 win, Galway manager Henry Shefflin did say that his side had nothing to lose from their short trip down to Cusack Park but, perhaps more honestly, he admitted that the win was “important psychologically” for the Tribesmen.
Even if Galway do dispatch Westmeath as expected in their final league game this Sunday (Mullingar, 1.45pm), it’s a result that would have done very little to cover up the deficiencies shown by potential consecutive losses to Clare, Limerick and Cork.
The five-week gap between the end of the league campaign and the beginning of the Leinster championship should run a little smoother after Galway’s performance at the weekend, however, a showing that looked a step above what had gone before, even allowing for the seemingly disinterested opposition.
Shefflin, for his part, was happy enough with the improvement in performance levels.
“I felt [the performance against] Cork wasn’t good and we didn’t respond well to the sending-off. I thought Limerick was better, but probably still wasn’t at the level that we require,” said the manager on his side’s recent struggles. “You’re hoping then [for a response] because three in a row is a bit of a ‘what are we doing’ kind of job.”
Galway made a pretty shocking start to the game against Clare, trailing 0-8 to 0-1 early on but Shefflin didn’t seem overly concerned at that stage, suggesting that his team had put in some hard sessions in Loughgeorge in the days in the lead-up to the game.
“Lads were probably getting up to the pace of it. We trained a couple of times this week and we’re probably pushing the boat a little bit to see, with us being out of the league, if you can push things on a little bit. You don’t know what everyone else is doing, but I thought the lads dragged themselves back into it well.”
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Galway 3-10
Waterford 2-6
DARREN KELLY IN DUGGAN PARK
Galway made a solid start to this year’s All-Ireland minor camogie championship on Sunday as they ran out five-point winners over Waterford.
Two Alannah Fahy goals bookended the Tribesgirls’ performance while Aoibheann Barry also contributed 1-7.
The maroon and white were strong favourites and just over 60 seconds in, Galway set the tone for what looked like would be a routine opening day win for them.
Barry played the through ball, allowing Fahy get on the end for the first goal. However, the next two scores went Waterford’s way as Maggie Gostl and Alannah McNulty reduced the deficit to the minimum.
Síofra and Caoimhe Kelly set up Fahy for a Galway point on seven minutes making it 1-1 to 0-2; and a Barry free six minutes later restored the home side’s three-point cushion.
Galway had the wind but struggled to put distance between themselves and their opponents, and the spirited visitors showed this wasn’t going to be an easy outing as Eimear O’Neill’s cross into the square on 14 minutes was batted to the net by Gostl to draw the sides level.
The teams traded over the next two minutes: Abbie Massey picked out Barry for a Galway point; Niamh Halley won a Waterford free which Gostl converted.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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