This article is from page 95 of the 2008-02-12 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 95 JPG
BY HIS own reckoning, this must be the year Galway deliver or his time across the border will be regarded as a failure. That Galway had enough in the tank to see off Clare on Sunday won’t send any tremors across the country, but condisering Cork’s cur- rent status, the time couldn’t be bet- ter for an attack on the super powers ome nlenabberee
Ger Loughnane come out of the dressing room on Sunday gushing about the present atmosphere in his new hurling home.
“It’s brilliant,” he says. “It com- pares to anything I have ever been involved in before. They want to suc- ceed. These are really, really great Feels
But there’s a proviso.
“T still think we need something defensively, someone like Ollie Can- ning. I still think he could do a great job for Galway. But I am delighted to see Ger [Farragher] back. I said
to them all in the dressing room that he’s an example to all of us. He spent all of last year on the sideline and was up in the stand for the All-Ire- land quarter-final against Kilkenny and never came on. He could have walked away or he could have sulked. We spoke to him last October. We told him the talent he had and what he had to work on. He worked so hard over the winter and you see the results out there today.”
Like his old colleague Mike McNa- mara, Loughnane also had an opin- ion on refereeing.
“The problem is you can do any- thing you want with your body but any little tap with a hurley and you’re going to get a yellow card. And when you’ve got one, then it’s very easy to get the second. Referees are under fierce pressure. I thought Seamus [Roche] applied the rules as they are now. It’s not Seamus or any other referee that’s at fault. It 1s the peo- ple that are making these rules. They are going to destroy the game com-
pletely if they keep going like that. There will be no physical contact in it whatsoever.
“Seamus did nothing wrong. He is going by the rules. He has some guy up in the stand watching him and he has to try and not lose too many points. I understand he starts off with 100 points and then they are deduct- ed as he goes along.”
Galway’s poor end to the game and Clare’s late flourish also left him dis- appointed.
“People will go away and say Gal- way, Jesus, they gave away all their scores in the last few minutes. This is One monkey we’ve got to get rid of and we’ve got to get rid of it in the league. We have to face someone when it’s level with ten minutes left and we’ve got to fight out of that situ- ation and win the game. Unless we do that, you can’t really say that Gal- way have arrived.”