MOUNTBELLEW-MOYLOUGH MANGER AND captain, Val Daly and Eoin Finnerty, were both magnanimous in defeat after yesterday’s controversial Connacht semi-final.
Padraig Pearses of Roscommon were 1-8 to 1-7 winners at Hyde Park after a dramatic finish, in which substitute Tom Butler landed the winning point deep into stoppage time, before the referee needed an escort off the pitch.
“There were ugly scenes at the end as Mayo referee Jerome Henry was challenged by several players and officials and needed an escort off the pitch,” as John Fallon’s match report for The42 read.
“Mountbellew were incensed with several late decisions, not least the failure to award a mark to Bary McHugh just before Butler struck the winning point.”
Some Mountbellew-Moylough players pushed and jostled the referee at full-time. There's no condoning it but God almighty it's bound to be enraging, a year's work, Connacht semi, probable winner off this mark and for some reason, it's not given. Pearse came down and won it instead pic.twitter.com/gN2h203TzC
— Cahair O'Kane (@CahairOKane1) December 11, 2021
Mountbellew manager Daly touched on that in his post-match interview, as he reasoned on some of Henry’s decisions.
Speaking to Galway Bay FM, he began: ”We have to congratulate Pearses on winning the game. They got through to the next round which is a Connacht final, and good luck to them.
“The last five minutes wasn’t pretty from our point of view. In fairness, the man in the middle makes the decisions. He made a couple of decisions we were baffled with, and most people in the crowd, I think, were baffled with.
“There was one clear foul where our player got his legs cut under him, Barry McHugh, and the second one involved Barry as well. A good pass in from Michael [Daly], a mark, hit the ground and you’re allowed a few seconds to get your hand up in the air, which he did, and the referee waved play on.
But that’s life on the road in the club championship. It’s a learning process for us. For us, it’s been good. We were down in Ballinamore and got it tough, and got it tough again here today and we came out the wrong side of a one-point loss.
“That was a big decision – the mark one – that went against us, it would have put us a point ahead had we converted it heading into the last few minutes of injury time. But that is life in the club championship.”
Pressed further by the journalists around him, Daly wouldn’t be drawn on the frustration.
“We want to hold our heads up high, we want to respect the situation, we want to respect the officials in the game because they have a tough job to do. We have to understand when they make a poor call, it’s tough to take. He’s made a poor call and he’ll have to live with it, and we have to live with it big time.
“At the end of the day, we’ve had a really good year. We’ve conducted ourselves well. I didn’t like the bit of indiscipline at the end, but in fairness, it was a very fractious affair. They wouldn’t allow our kickout by pulling and dragging our players around the place, which is tactically maybe what Dublin did to Mayo in the All-Ireland final. With one kickout left, we needed to get that kickout away quickly but instead of that, the referee was going around booking people and giving black cards. Common sense should have told them that we were a point down with a play left and we needed the ball. We weren’t interested in slowing the game up or doing silly things.
“But there’s no sour grapes from us, this is life on the road, this is football. This is a tough day for us to take.”
Finnerty echoed his manager’s words, noting that “disappointment” was his primary emotion in the wake of the defeat.
“To lose any championship game by a point, it’s always going to be disappointment,” he said.
Very proud of how we fought out there. I think we spent most of that game with 14 men between black cards and red cards, we were right in it down to the wire, could have probably got a mark in the end and they went up and kicked the winner. Best of luck to them now in the Connacht final.”
Asked to expand on the ‘dubious decisions,’ Finnerty added: “The boys are saying there was a mark, but sure that’s sport like. Refs make mistakes like the players. That’s the way it goes. Fair play to Pearses.
“A years’ work goes in and these things happen, but that’s sport. We can’t do anything about it. We’ll enjoy the Christmas, we’ll reflect. I think it was a great year overall for us, we were good Galway county champions. We’re very proud of each other, we’ll go again next year.”
