Sligo came agonisingly close to pulling off a massive shock in the Connacht Championship yesterday, with Galway needing an injury time goal in order to overcome the Division Three side at Markievicz Park.
The home side would lead throughout the game, right up to injury time. In fact, Galway would not lead at any stage in the match prior to this.
In the end, a last gasp goal from Rbo Finnerty was enough to secure a 1-13 to 0-14 victory for the Tribesmen.
Not a minute too soon @Galway_GAA pic.twitter.com/zbGsYZ97qt
— John Gillespie (@PRO_Galway_Ball) April 20, 2024
While Galway will be relieved to come away with a victory in this one, their manager was under no illusions about their performance on the day.
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Padraic Joyce gives honest summary of Galway win over Sligo
Padraic Joyce is never one to pull punches when he feels his team is underperforming, something was the case after yesterday's game.
Speaking to RTÉ after the match, Joyce admitted that Galway 'robbed' Sligo by scoring that last minute goal to win the game.
We’re just relieved to get out of that. Very relieved to win the game, we didn’t perform anywhere near our levels.
Sligo were very unfortunate not to see the game out, we’ve probably robbed them in the end, to be honest. It was the 73rd minute before we got ahead in the game. We know we were lucky to win the game...
But that performance is not near good enough and if we perform like that in two weeks' time, we’ll have a job keeping the ball kicked out.
The big positive is that, even though everything was going against it and we weren’t really clicking as a team, we kept at it and kept at it and eventually got the break at the end. We didn’t give up. The lads stuck at it, I have to give them full marks for that.
That’s the only thing I can take out of it. There’s three or four lads who had brilliant performances but other than that, it was a disappointing enough day for us, now.
Galway will now prepare for a Connacht final in two weeks, a game they will have little chance of winning if they do not improve upon yesterday's performance.
You get the sense that Padraic Joyce will make that abundantly clear to his players over the coming days.
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