Deflated Micheal Donoghue struggles for answers

Micheal Donoghue is only in the Galway job a matter of weeks but already he has twice experienced defeat to Dublin at Parnell Park.

Last month, after Galway’s loss to Dublin in the Walsh Cup semi-finals, the new manager pointed out that having only been installed days before Christmas, he and his management team were naturally playing catch up.

It was a little more difficult to explain away their latest insipid display and the former All-Ireland winning Clarinbridge boss simply shrugged when asked.

“With the win over Cork the first day we were hoping to build on it and coming up to Dublin we thought we had a good opportunity,” said Donoghue.

“But we were up here four weeks ago too and they gave us a good lesson and we didn’t learn enough from it.

“We knew coming up that Division 1A is just very competitive and everyone is going to be concentrating on winning their home games.

“I suppose with Dublin’s loss last week there was going to be that big reaction from them too. The disappointing thing for us was that we weren’t in too bad of a position at half-time but when they got the goal and scored 1-5 without reply it gave them a platform to push on and they took it.”

Donoghue acknowledged that on a wet and windy night in sticky conditions, Dublin dominated the physical exchanges, indicating a greater desire.

“They did, and the way they set themselves up they just played really well. They dominated that physical side of things and pushed on for the win. I couldn’t disagree with any of that.

“Division 1A is so competitive, every manager will tell you that. You just have to move on and we have two weeks of hard training now and we’ll look forward to going down to Kilkenny.”