Credit: Oliver McVeigh/Sportsfile

Interview by Emmet Maloney of Extratime.ie

Galway manager Sean Connor and left back Shaun Kelly both spoke exclusively to ExtraTime.ie after their narrow 3-2 defeat to Dundalk at Oriel Park. Neither were too downhearted after a good performance that might have garnered a point on another night.

Sean Connor spoke first “Aye I’m disappointed you know when you get to 2-2 with 10 minutes to go you should be good enough to see the game out. I feel sorry for the players because they’ve worked really, really hard, I hate it when you get done by a set piece because then it comes down to individual responsibility and there’s always someone to blame.”

Galway have had a stressful winter and the squad are still gelling, Sean thinks this had an influence on the result “In the first game (St Pats) we got a bit leggy, I think we lasted longer tonight, we’re probably going to need another couple of games. The fixture list has been tough for us, we’ve had to play Pats and Dundalk who in my opinion will be there or thereabouts this year. So we haven’t had an opportunity to get a win and get a bit of confidence under our belt. I think maybe that performance tonight might give us that confidence but at the end of the day I can’t sit down and say oh well done boys we’ve lost again, you have to be disappointed and I am disappointed and thankfully the players are disappointed.”

The Tribesmen were a handful going forward and Karl Moore put in a man of the match performance, Sean can see ways to build on the defeat “At times I thought we made it easy for them, I think at times we looked good when we put the balls in the right areas in behind them and in between them and got Karl Moore on the ball. Too many of the balls dropped short, too many were high up the middle and easy for their centre halves to deal with. I thought over the 90 minutes their front two caused us more problems than my front two caused Dundalk. When you look at the two budgets you know we are 2 they are 7 or whatever it is the difference was the quality. I think if I had Jason Byrne or Mark Quigley in my team we win.”

“I think Karl Moore is good enough to play in any team in this league, I rate him really, really highly I think he’s a terrific young man he needs to appreciate how good he is and how good he can be and once he does that then we’ll see the real Karl Moore.”

Read the full interview here at extratime.ie