PADRAIC JOYCE WATCHED his team overcome Armagh in extraordinary circumstances.
The first penalty shoot-out in football’s All-Ireland series saw Galway hold their nerve and advance to a semi-final showdown with Derry.
Matthew Tierney slid his penalty, Galway’s fourth, just beyond Ethan Rafferty’s outstretched arms.
Earlier misses from Conor Turbitt and Stefan Campbell meant Armagh’s championship run had ground to a halt.
“My heart goes out to Kieran McGeeney and the Armagh team and supporters,” said Joyce. “Because it’s no way to lose a match, a quarter-final. We’re condensing this season into six or seven months, which is crazy to be honest.
“Both sets of players, Galway and Armagh, have trained flat out since last December. Let’s call a spade a spade, that’s no way to lose a match.
“While we’ll take the victory, my heart goes out to them.
“Because they added great colour and support today and it’s not the way to do it. It’s something the GAA need to look at because we’re not soccer.
“Penalties are for soccer, it’s not for GAA in my eyes. Fair play to the Armagh and Galway players that took the penalties, and the two keepers. But it’s a pure lottery, what happens.”
Galway had been working on spot-kicks in the event a situation like this would transpire.
“We’ve been practising penalties since last December, since we started training, cos we knew the way the game was going something was going to happen and in fairness to Shane, Rob, Damien and Matt Tierney – and Kieran Molloy would have been our fifth taker – they would have been practising them every night.”
Galway had full-back Sean Kelly red carded before extra-time started after a full-scale brawl at the end of full-time. Joyce was bemused at that decision.
“We lost our captain in extra-time. I don’t understand how they pick out one player but we’ll look at the video and see what happened there. We had to take control of the game in extra-time, which we did. We showed good character.
“Even then to get the sucker punch of a goal in the second-half of extra-time. It looked like we are dead and buried but the lads showed brilliant heart, brilliant character and kept playing football, kept playing through the lines and Cillian popped up with an amazing equaliser at the end. ”
The melee drew widespread criticism and Joyce admitted “they were ugly scenes, they shouldn’t be happening.”
He continued, “but you can’t just stand back and let the lads in and top of it. In fairness to the Armagh management, and our own management, we got it pulled away as quickly as we could and lads down the tunnel to focus on the match.
“The you pick a team to go out and you’re told on the pitch just before extra-time that you’re down your captain. So you have to go and regroup then again and Billy Mannion came in for us and he set up a brilliant goal.
“It was his championship debut for Galway and what a time to do it, what a place. He had great composure to hand the ball across to Cillian for the goal. We knew that the game wasn’t lost.
“There was still 20 minutes to be played and while it felt like a loss at full-time we told the lads that they had to go back playing football and just worked the ball through the lines, which we did.
“We controlled the game in the first-half very well and then the sucker punch in the second-half was tough to take but, in fairness to the lads, I couldn’t speak highly enough of them. They’re exhausted in there and they’ll have to recover but we will look at the video on Tuesday and see what the craic is.”
He praised the character of his team for the way they responded to Armagh’s late burst that forced extra-time.
“They stuck at it. Coming in at full-time it nearly feels like a loss, we were six up and lost it. But then they found eight minutes of injury-time and then played two more extra to play 10 at the end of the game.
“It was what it was but in fairness to the lads they showed great character, great resilience.
“Galway have been accused of being soft in the past so at least today they put a little bit of mark on the good direction because Galway had to go and win a big game in Croke Park and the was a big game. And a tough game. We’ll get ready for Derry in 13 days’ time.”