MAKING MOST
Davy limited by the players available to him, says Donoghue
You will do whatever it takes to get that victory
GALWAY hurling manager Micheál Donoghue has leapt to the defence of Davy Fitzgerald and his use of a sweeper set-up with Wexford.
Having been second best to the Tribesmen in the Leinster final, Wexford crashed out of the Championship following a 1-23 to 1-19 defeat by Waterford on Sunday when Fitzgerald lashed out at critics of his team’s style of play.
However, Donoghue defended the sweeper system that has gained plenty of critics, amongst them Sportsmail columnist Michael Duignan and 10-time AllIreland winner Henry Shefflin.
‘From this side of the table it’s a results-driven business so you do whatever it takes to get a win,’ insisted Donoghue.
‘If Wexford won at the weekend, would people have been going on about it? Maybe, but they’d still have got a good result.
‘For me it’s about what you have at your disposal and what gets you over the line. When you are this side of the table, that’s all you are worried about.
‘It’s pretty simple. You devise your game-plan down to the players that you have available to you. I think the way the game has gone you have to be very adaptable. Over the last couple of days there has been a lot of talk but for me it is down to who you have available and maybe your own mindset on what you want to do, whatever you are comfortable with.’
Fitzgerald reacted in thinskinned fashion to comments during Sunday’s quarter-final by Duignan and Shefflin. The former has made no bones about how the set-up can impact on the game as a spectacle, reflecting a mood amongst a swathe of supporters who would prefer a more traditional game with more conventional match-ups and goalmouth action.
‘Sweepers should be outlawed! Not the game I love. Coach players to tackle & to use their heads instead of using extra backs to compensate!’ Duignan tweeted with his comment retweeted nearly 200 times and receiving almost 1,000 likes. Shefflin’s comment also struck a chord: ‘Who is marking who in this game? One would hate to be playing in the full-forward line — or be a forward full stop.’
While Galway have played in much more orthodox fashion, Donoghue reserved the right to change his formation as circumstances dictate, going so far as to say he might use the same template himself with his team due to meet Tipperary on Sunday week.
‘If it meant us winning a big game… It’s down to your opposition as well. Sometimes if you want to defend something you are going to have to drop back. It’s reactive on the day, if you need to do it you do it. But you do it because of what you are trying to achieve.’
And yet he admitted that if there is any team to play a sweeper against it’s Tipperary, given the lethal scoring combination of John ‘Bubbles’ O’Dwyer, Séamus Callanan and John McGrath, who combined for a staggering 2-15 from play against Kilkenny in last year’s All-Ireland hurling final. Added to that is the fact that the previous two semi-finals between the two teams have been freescoring affairs, Galway winning by a point in 2015 and Tipp edging it by the same last summer.
‘Historically, when you look at the last three years it has probably been a manager’s nightmare that just turns into a shootout. And I’d expect [the semi-final] to probably end up the same way.’
Kilkenny manager Brian Cody even drew flak for not providing his under-pressure full-back line with added cover last September, though Donoghue admitted that the problem can stem from further out the field.
‘You are always very conscious of where the ball is coming from as well. Sometimes it’s easy just to blame the boys inside when there is 40 yards of space in front of them. How to react to that and how do you minimise it?’
Galway had to deal with not one, but two sweepers in their Leinster semi-final against Offaly, and yet still managed to put up a massive score, 0-33 to 1-11. In the final against Wexford, they came up just one short of the magic 30-point barrier.
‘After those games there were questions “you’re not scoring goals, was that because they were playing a sweeper or two sweepers?”. And of course it is going to have an impact. I think the biggest plus for us from the Offaly game was that we went down expecting a sweeper and then they hit us with two. It took us 10 or 12 minutes to get the feel of it and then our shooting from outside on the day was very good.’
On the injury front, Galway have a clean bill of health in terms of
personnel and Donoghue revealed that 2015 All-Star nominee forward Johnny Glynn is back in the mix after returning home from America where had been living.
‘He came back last week. He was just really unfortunate that when he came back in in his first club game he hurt his knee. The initial diagnosis was that it wasn’t too bad but then because it wasn’t healing properly we had to get it reassessed and then discovered that he required surgery.
‘That left him out for a number of weeks. He’s worked really hard and he’s back with us for the last 10 days or so. It’s great to have him around, he’s a great character and a great influence on the group.
‘The downside is he hasn’t played many games, but as every day passes he’s getting stronger and stronger. It’s a great option to have.’