GALWAY BOSS ALAN Mulholland has revealed there is ‘a burning desire’ amongst his squad to build on their 2013 campaign despite the disappointment of yesterday’s qualifier loss to Cork in Croke Park.
They suffered an agonizing 1-17 to 1-16 defeat against Cork after having built up a healthy lead during the second-half.
But Mulholland was keen afterwards to take the positives from their campaign.
“Each game we went through this year, we got another monkey off. We hadn’t been in Croke Park since 2008 and not winning a qualifier since 2004.
“It was an ideal year to push on and come in under the radar. This is a very young group and there’s a burning desire in the dressing room to build from this.
“I thought we had it there at the end, when we went four or five up. Unfortunately the goal came at a good time for them.
“When you have a group of Allstars to take off the bench like Patrick Kelly and Donnacha O’Connor and Paul Kerrigan it helps. Our lads had put in a lot of effort during the game and you could see it on their faces.They were beginning to wane. The goal was a killer.”
Mayo match
Mulholland was hugely praiseworthy of his players in how they managed to turn their campaign around this summer after the severe disappointment of losing heavily to Mayo in their Connacht opener in May.
“Look 17 points wasn’t a fair reflection of our ability against Mayo. Since then we’ve knuckled down, trained a lot harder, there’s a unity come into the group, perversely or ironically, since then, that hasn’t been there.
“One of the criticisms of this group in the past was a lack of leaders but definitely since the Mayo game lads have stood up and we’ve a group of leaders now within that team.
“Definitely there’s a bond within the group now and unfortunately we’ve no competition for the next while because we’d love to get some more games right now, just when we feel we’re on the up again.
“It was turning out to be a great adventure, a hot summer and four qualifier games. These four games we’ve had since Mayo, they’re the most Galway have had in a long time and I’m hoping that will be the springboard to some good things for this group.”
