‘ Players gave it their all’
SLIGO manager Paul Taylor while disappointed with the result, said he couldn’t have asked for more from his brave U21s.
“Look, we came here tonight to win the game and we had the work done, We felt that we enough done to win the game.
“We knew it was a good Galway side and we had seen them against Mayo and we’d seen them against Leitrim and we knew how good they were.
“I can tell you the lads can be proud of themselves. It’s not just one of these good performances from Sligo again.
“I think we drove them the whole way to the wire and when they went ahead of us, they couldn’t push on. We came back. But the lads gave everything and they can be proud of themselves.
“Every fella that was involved today can be proud of themselves and the whole panel. I’ve said all year this is about a panel and it’s about 35 lads working hard together and that was done and to be fair, we nearly pulled it off.”
Paul said his players showed great character to come back when four points down in the match. “I know there’s good spirit in this team and this is a good group of lads.
“As I said to the boys in there, they can be proud of themselves. I’m sure they don’t feel it now but in a week’s time they will look back and unfortunately it will be another loss for Sligo but I tell you this was a damn close game.
“We probably had chances in the first half we didn’t take and ultimately it cost us and I suppose the first ten minutes of the second half cost us aswell and you know it’s a good Galway side as I said.
“They will be All- Ireland contenders as I’ve said before. They go and play in two week’s time and I wish them the best of luck.”
The manager said the future is bright for his talented players. “For our lads in there I hope they keep pushing for the future.
“There’s a great future for Sligo football, that’s what I said to the boys in there and I hope that they keep together and they push on for the future.”
The Eastern Harps man, who also featured prominently as a player for Sligo, said he wanted to give something back as manager: “As everyone knows, Sligo football is in me. I really enjoyed playing Sligo football all my life. As I’ve always said to people, football has been very very good to me.
“So look it, I’m trying to give something back as I told the lads, I wanted them to be different. That they would be the same as every Sligo player that went out before them if they went out and lost the game, so there was no pressure on them. But they could be different if they went out and won it.
“But to be honest with you, they didn’t win the game but they were different.
“It’s a long, long time since any Sligo team has put up a performance like that against a team like the calibre of Galway,” Paul pointed out.
He said there is definitely a future for these lads in the Senior jersey in times to come.
“The Seniors is well on this year but there’s a good few lads on the Senior panel already. I know that Niall and his management have been watching them all year and I’m sure that there’ll be more to get the call up, it not now then certainly next year,
“As I said, I hope that group of players stay together as they have great hearts and they have great guts and they have a good skill level and I wish them the best of luck in the future,” Paul added.
In terms of whether he will be overseeing the U20s next year, Paul said: “I have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks and I mean you know we’ll go away tonight and we’ll talk about it over the next week and look I won’t make any decisions on anything right now.
“It’s not the time to do that. I’ll go home to my wife and my family, they haven’t seen a lot of me in the last few weeks.”
This was the last year of the U21 competition but Paul insisted Sligo went out with their heads held high.
“We talked about Sligo not winning it before and we talked about everything we felt could give us an edge and we didn’t win it, it’s 53 years running and Sligo never won it but I can tell you one thing, we gave it one hell of a rattle there this evening.”