Effort playing off for Galligan and Co

GAA news

Thomas Galligan is a man who is clearly enjoying his football at present and after a super individual display against Fermanagh, the big Lacken Celtic midfielder had a smile on his face.

Galligan hit the net after 11 seconds for a remarkable opening goal and he carried his momentum from there right through the encounter.

“I suppose the whole team comes together and we all try to perform, I just happened to get on the end of a few scores. The throw-in, I'm not going to say it was a pre-match routine but it worked out well in the end,” he explained.

“I probably should have finished with a little bit more, a few wides near the end, but yeah, it was a good performance by everyone and I think you saw by the scoreboard at the end of the game, we pushed on in the second half.

“I suppose I just won the throw-in and the whole play opened up. I suppose that was kind of a plan, that if I won it, Gearoid would pull out of the way and if it opened up, go for it and if someone came to me, pop it off.

“But the road opened up in front and I just kind of kept going. Lots of them have been missed so if they go in, they're good enough.

“It was nice that every time they got a score, we were able to get a score and that goal was always between us so you were never under too much pressure. It was great to have that little bit of a buffer throughout the game and then getting the second goal as well, when they did try to get on top of us, they got it down to two points and then we got probably a fortuitous enough goal and pushed out to five and then kind of kept it at that.”

Galligan was also heavily involved in Cavan's second score, laying it off for Padraig Faulkner, although he didn't realise at the time which of his teammates had finished to the net.

“I'm not sure who took a shot but it dropped short. I'm not really sure, I kind of got my arse in ahead of the man and pushed him out of the way. I don't know if it was Gerry or someone coming in at the back post and I think I put it through your man's legs and Gerry finished it, or it might have been Padraig, I didn't really see.”

Informed that it was Faulkner who grabbed the goal, Thomas laughed: “Well, if Faulkner scored it, it was fortuitous! You're never going to lose a game if he's scoring goals.”

Cavan adjusted their set-up at half-time and shored up the rearguard to good effect.

“I suppose we were on top, we were four points up at half-time so we wanted to keep that buffer and not let them get a run on us. We wanted to keep at least that in the game. We were pressing their kick-outs in the first half and we weren't getting much joy out of it so we tried to slow the attack down and break from there.

“I think you can see, we have a lot of athletic footballers and we have a savage bench to come in, the likes of Marty Reilly and Oisin Brady and those lads who can really stretch the field. It suited us in the second half, we knew they'd be really pressing to try and get back into the game so between the management, they just set us up that way.”

Galligan agreed that Cavan are physically in excellent shape at present.

“You can see the work that André's doing there with everyone, you'd have to put a lot of it down to him. He has transformed a lot of the players on the team, put size on, put fitness, put explosiveness on to them. Yeah, you can tell when the game opens up there and you see Gearoid galloping up the field and lads can't get anywhere near him... You'd notice the difference in a few boys as well, the likes of Cormac O'Reilly there has put on a lot of size and is more explosive. Paddy, Miller, all those lads have sort of upped their game through André and the strength and conditioning and the effort they have put in.

“It was good to see and to be able to bring on a bench as well. We had a panel of 26 togged out there today and they all could have come on and made a difference.”

As for the Tailteann Cup itself, the 2020 All-Star likes the competition personally but believes its future is still in the balance.

“No matter if you played Fermanagh in a challenge match, you're always going to get a crowd to it. The competition itself, I think it's a good competition, I know there are people giving out about it. It all depends on what the GAA do with it, if the GAA let it slide under the ground and don't publicise it or give it the time of day, it won't be a great competition, it will be like the Tommy Murphy a few years ago.

“It all depends on how much publicity it gets leading into the next game in two weeks. If you have a standalone fixture in Croke Park and it's an empty stadium, it's not much good, it doesn't progress it. There's far more of an atmosphere here today with three or four thousand at it but three or four thousand on top of each other is better than five thousand in an empty Croke Park.

“It all depends going forward. The first year of it will decide how it's ran out and how it's perceived. A few good games and a good final... If there were a few drubbings and a few bad games, you'd find people giving out about it. It all depends, you won't know until the end of the year.”

Informed that the semi-finals would be a double-header and live on RTE, he said: “I wasn't sure what the whole layout was but if that's what they're doing, they've done all they can to publicise it. Four teams should bring a good enough crowd, I'm sure both sets of supporters should stick around for both games.”

As for avoiding another Ulster team, he smiled: “You can freshen it up a little bit instead of playing the same auld lads every year!”