GALWAY BOSS PADRAIC Joyce was unhappy with the decision not to award his team a penalty in the first half against Mayo yesterday in Croke Park.

Joyce’s team lost out by three points in the Allianz Division 1 football league decider against their Connacht rivals.

The Galway manager felt there should have been greater punishment for the incident where Mayo goalkeeper Colm Reape collided with Tribesmen forward Johnny Heaney in the first half in front of Hill 16.

“It was a poor call, I thought. The rule nowadays is if you deny a clear goalscoring chance it supposed to be a penalty, but obviously it wasn’t the rule today.

“There’s no-one being biased. A rule is a rule. David Gough gave one last week for Monaghan against Mayo when a fella got pulled down on the 21 and this was given as a free-in for a tackle so what was the free for? Obviously hurting the man.

“Either implement the rules or not. That’s not sour grapes. It’s one of these things that would have made a difference in the game. There were three if not four (calls) that I wouldn’t be happy with but again I’m not going to question Brendan Cawley. He’s one of the best referees out there so you have to ask him that.

“If he was my ‘keeper I’d expect him to do the same thing. He came out hard for the ball. I’m just saying we were told last year that deliberate foul inside the 21- if you deny a goal scoring opportunity, it’s supposed to be a penalty. I don’t know – ye know the rules as well as I do.”

Joyce elaborated on the flaws in his team’s performance in a game that they were always chasing after a sluggish start.

“I just think that we started poorly and we were chasing the game a lot of the day and put a lot of effort into trying to get back level to push on. We had plenty of chances. We turned the ball over five, six times in the first half and it was just bread and butter for Mayo on the counterattack and played into their hands.

“I thought overall we played okay but never set the world on fire out there at the same time. I think we scored six times out of 16 chances in the second half, which tells its own tale and Mayo had 10 scores between frees and two marks and their goalkeeper gets man-of-the-match so look it’s frustrating, definitely.

“We just couldn’t get back level to try and put a bit more pressure on Mayo but fair play to them. Kevin has done a good job with them since he came in. They’ve probably been the form team in the league. They saw the game out well, they got a big impact from Tommy Conroy and a few of the lads that they took in as well so no complaints.”

Galway manager Padraic Joyce. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

The loss marked Galway’s third defeat in a Croke Park final in the space of twelve months. 

“We’re not down in the dumps. There is the fact that we’ve lost three finals in 12 months, which isn’t ideal, but we’ve come from Division 2 to an All-Ireland final to a league final.

“At least we’re competing at the level but we just need to get that little bit extra to get over the line. We have probably three weeks left to get fit for championship. Mayo are probably on a different traffic pattern than us but they would have probably started back a lot before we started in November. We had 10 or 11 lads playing club championship up until the end of January. We had 15 playing Sigerson so we haven’t even had a full squad.

“We had a lot of injuries at the start but we’re tipping away nicely and the league has been very good for Galway. We found out a lot about good young players coming through – Johnny McGrath, Seán Fitz, Cian Hernon. We found out these lads will make an impact come championship so overall we’re not in a bad place.”

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