Leitrim manager Shane Ward accused Galway of being "very negative" after yesterday's Connacht SFC first round clash in Carrick-on-Shannon.

The visitors ran out comfortable 1-13 to 0-8 winners to set up a semi-final meeting with Mayo in Salthill on June 14, but Ward, for one, wasn't impressed by the tactics they employed.

"At one stage, they had 15 men behind their own '45'," the Leitrim manager is quoted in the Irish Independent.

"Everyone is talking about the negativity of Ulster football, but the questions have to go a lot further afield than that. Certainly, the big men hit and once they hit we go down in a heap and it doesn't make for good viewing.

"That's a professional team and that is a Division 2 team, they know how to kill out a game, but it doesn't make for a nice spectacle. I think people would rather watch 15 men behind the ball and working hard and the game flowing than big men lying down on the ground with the physio around them all the time."

Ward's Galway counterpart Kevin Walsh brushed off the criticism by having a dig at Leitrim's tactics.

"I think every time we touched the ball their wing backs and their wing forwards were falling back into that hole. You know they're quite happy just to make sure that we didn't get through," he said.

"So look we got a few points up. I didn't really care if Leitrim didn't want to come out and get back the lead."

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