O'Mahony delighted Galway still afloat

Relief was the dominant emotion for Galway manager John O'Mahony yesterday. "To be honest, we are delighted that we are still in the championship," he said after the current All-Ireland champions secured a last-minute point to scrape a draw with Sligo.

The Galway boss preferred to wait until he viewed the Sligo goals "especially the last one on video" before making any judgment. "It looked very dodgy," said O'Mahony. "Sometimes all the decisions go against you and that's the way it was with us today. We have to live with that. Certainly it looked that one of the goals or maybe two of them were square balls, but I'm not into making excuses. What I would be more concerned about is how so many balls got into that danger area."

"Sligo showed today that they are a class team. They were up for it. It was only our second match and everybody, naturally enough, is trying to knock us off our pedestal," said Galway's giant midfielder Sean O Domhnaill.

"Just because you are All-Ireland champions people expect you to win by 10 or 11 points. It doesn't work like that. We will have to figure out what we did wrong today and fix it by next Sunday."

O Domhnaill reflected on Galway's midfield performance. "Midfield is always a battleground area between big men. Eamonn O'Hara may not be that big, but he has got strength and speed. They (Paul Durcan and O'Hara) are as good as any midfield pairing in the whole country and when you see the likes of Con O'Meara come in to the middle, you know that's great back-up for any team," added O Domhnaill.

O Domhnaill is confident that the draw will do the team good. "At this stage last year, it was the drawn game with Roscommon that made us. We are at home now, but that does not do anything for us, Sligo have shown that they are a good team and they will be up for it even more in Tuam so we are just going to have to lift it and see what we can do. Today's performance is perhaps only 60 per cent of what Galway can produce. Any team that is going to beat Sligo has to be a very good team."

Jar Fallon explained his position: "I was picked to play and was really looking forward to it but I twisted my ankle before the start and it didn't feel too good.

The injury came around and I felt fine when asked to go in."

"We had to catch up in the end and go down and get the equalising point," said O'Mahony. On the question of Jar Fallon's ankle injury, O'Mahony refuted the suggestion that it was some sort of tactical move. "We had intended to play Jar from the start but he damaged his ankle and we decided at half-time that we could let him out at some stage.

"We honestly didn't play with full rhythm at any time there today and until we do that, we could be struggling. A lot of the good football was played by Sligo today," said O'Mahony.

Micky Moran, the Sligo coach, could not resist having another jibe at the media. "Some people believe what they read, I am just glad that I don't have to believe what I read," he said.

"I told the boys that the game was still alive despite the Galway goal just on half-time. We proved we could stay with them, we hung in and got the goals. I thought they (Galway) were very fortunate to get the last free (it yielded the equalising point in injury-time). I was a wee bit dubious about some decisions, but we will accept them now and re-focus for the replay," said Moran.

"I thought our fitness levels were very good. We just took some wrong options and gave away some silly short ball. Only one player in the team is over 24. I am not saying that we are world beaters, but if everything goes well on the day and we perform, we can give anybody a game and that's to say we can beat Galway next week."

Sligo star Paul Durcan, who was involved in all three goals scoring the second one himself, felt that "the game was never gone beyond us, even when we were seven points down early in the second half".

"It is better to be nearly drowned than to be nearly saved," quipped Galway PRO Jack Mahon. "We have always found it difficult to win here. We were beaten in midfield and there is a deal of depression in the dressingroom, but full credit to the lads for getting back to earn the draw."