This article is from page 107 of the 2008-07-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 107 JPG
GER Loughnane has witnessed many ups and downs in his managerial ca- reer but perhaps none were as bewil- dering and demoralising as Galway’s defeat to Cork on Saturday.
Rumours of intense preparation were backed up by a National League final appearance in May and opti- mism was widespread in the stands on Saturday that Galway finally had a side to match the likes of Kilkenny.
That confidence only grew by haltf- time as Galway led by two points with the strong wind to come, and Cork had been reduced to 14 men af- ter Donal Og Cusack was dismissed for a second yellow, but with only Joe Canning proping up a toothless attack, Galway failed to emerge after the break.
Their overreliance on Canning was well founded as the teenager racked up 2-12 over the 70 minutes and de- servedly took the man-of-the-match award but it was a poor reflection on the rest of the forwards who only managed three points between them.
Standing by the team bus, Ger Loughnane appeared a shellshocked
figure. In full view of his players from their seated position on the bus, dis- illusionment was the key phrase he repeatedly used to describe Galway’s collapse but he was just as willing to praise Cork’s qualities.
“At half time and even early in the second half when we were four points up, it looked good but you have to hand it to Cork. The fellas they have, the drive they have, the physical power, the quality of their hurling and their support play.
‘That is the most susceptible mar- gin of all time, two points, because at least twelve points would have been the real difference between the two teams because only that we had Joe Canning, we would have been beaten off the field.
“It was a complete and utter col- lapse when you think of the amount of training that we have done, the quality of training that we have done, to see a team going down like that, it is absolutely disillusioning when you produced a display like we produce in the last 25 minutes when the game was really there to be won and lost.
“So it was very, very disappointing but you had to admire Cork. When
their backs were to the wall, all their big men came up trumps and that’s what champions do. Unfortunately, only one of our big men performed and he gave a fantastic display at full-forward but too many other of our players just didn’t perform on the day.
“Now you can as have as many reasons as you like for that. I know that they will all say about having no matches but that’s for another day. But I suppose when you see Cork getting beaten by Tipperary and then having another game against Dublin and we play just Antrim and Laois, I mean that is crazy, absolutely cra- zy. Io go into a game of that inten- sity, the players didn’t know what hit detoye0 a
The subject inevitably turned to where he and Galway go from here.
‘“That’s for another day but the road back for the players I think de- pends on the decisions that the hurl- ing board will make now. Are they going to go for matches early on in the year or are they going to cling to this system of just dropping in a team at the end of July when every other team has already played one or two
or three big matches and hoping that you will pull off one big display and get on the road after that.
“What was I was hoping there at the end is that we would get a draw and then you would have a replay and then you would see where you are going.
“But we didn’t deserve a draw, there is no question of deserving it, it would have been total robbery if we had got a draw.
“I’m just totally and utterly disil- lusioned. Completely disillusioned. You know we have had disapoint- ments before with teams but that was inexplicible when you see how we were playing in training and the qual- ity of the hurling in training and then to come down and play like that, you just look out and say ‘this isn’t the team that has been training with us for the last seven or eight months’.”
Another probing arrow came from the pack, enquiring whether he re- gretted saying when he took over the job that it would be a failure if Gal- way didn’t win an All-Ireland in two years?
“No. I don’t regret it whatsoever. It is a failure. There 1s no other way of
saying it. I went up to Galway for two years and I said I would give it two years to win an All-Ireland and we didn’t even win a quarter-final, we didn’t even get to a semi-final, we got nowhere in two years.
‘The very same problems as we had in the league final against Tipperary where only one or two forwards per- formed, happened again today after all the training we have done so in any man’s language, that’s a failure.”
The final missile was launched when he was questioned whether he would give it a third year, to which Loughnane quipped.
“Have a guess.”
With that, more tactical questions ensued but the bus wasn’t willing to wait any longer and with a beep of the horn, Loughnane promptly exited through the doors in what appears to be his last journey with Galway.