Kevin Walsh wounded over injury time

Galway manager Kevin Walsh expressed frustration at the amount of injury time played at the end of the second-half, calling on GAA top brass to consider using a stop-clock.

Referee Pádraig Hughes awarded four minutes of stoppages, but called for full-time shy of the 74th minute. Adding to Walsh’s annoyance was that little or no football was played during injury-time, an injury to Aidan O’Shea and the brawl that led to Lee Keegan’s sending-off holding up the action.

“It’s a pity there wasn’t a few more minutes maybe at the end to test out the character of this side. Four minutes was rightly called, but I’m not so sure there was even 40 seconds of that played.

“I think he blew up at 38:38 or something and you know what happened, Aidan O’Shea had an injury and also the little schmozzle at the end. I can see a lot of the frustrations in different people and why a stop-clock wouldn’t be looked at. It is frustrating, but either way, that’s not about the winning of the game, for players and for management looking on it can be frustrating that type of stuff.”

He took umbrage with the number of scoreable frees Mayo got. The free count was 19-13 against Galway in the first-half. “We were a bit unfortunate with the free count inside our scoring zone and it probably kept Mayo ticking over ahead of us, but that’s life, we have to move on with it...

I have no issues with the loss, we were beaten by the better team on the day and we’ll learn from it.”

The four-point deficit at the finish showed considerable improvement on recent Galway-Mayo meetings, the Tribesmen falling to their neighbour by 17 and seven points in 2013 and ’14 respectively.

“A lot of times we got up to the level of Mayo so it isn’t all glass half empty here, there’s a glass half full here as well. I don’t think we were out of that game at any stage... It was important we didn’t let ourselves be bullied around the place.

“There was a certain stage in the game, in the middle sector, where kickouts were a problem for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, put us on the back foot. But I thought the lads really worked hard and there were some great individual performances.

“At the end of the day it is about results and winning. But you have to come from somewhere and the process has to take you towards winning. I think we have improved quite a bit during the year. Our intention is to keep that process going to get to the top level.”