“The players who turned up should not be blamed for this embarrassment;
it’s the players who turned their back on Carlow football. I had only
six of the players who started against Offaly in the championship. Some
players did not even respond to calls as to whether they were available.
When they chose to ignore my calls I had to take a decision that they were
not making themselves available.”
Carlow football boss John Kearns rounds on the footballers who failed
to make themselves available for his county’s Tommy Murphy Cup game
with Waterford, which they lost by 8-10 to 0-7
“It’s very obvious that a transitional period has started in
Mayo football. That was going to happen. I don’t want to make assessments
on who should be and might be retiring. I have asked every player to make
no hasty decisions.”
Mayo boss John O’Mahony admits that change is a foot in the county
after his side exited the championship with a ten point defeat to Derry
“When you are losing you don’t need it. I admire Darren Rooney
for not planting him one because he had a clenched fist. Everybody in Ireland
would have said that he was dead right to do it. So credit to him for not.
You don’t need it when you are beaten and when you have 60,000 Dublin
fans shouting at you at the same time.”
Sligo’s Eamonn O’Hara gives credit to Laois defender Darren
Rooney for not striking out at Dublin’s Mark Vaughan, who taunted the
Laois man after grabbing the Sky Blues first goal in the Leinster final
“It seems that there is not much advantage in winning your province
except that you have won your title. If you even knew you were going to
be playing the winners of one of the qualifying games it would give an opportunity
to assess the game. But the way it stands this year you won’t know
until six days beforehand who you are playing, which doesn’t give you
much time to study the opposition or get ready for such an important game.”
Tyrone’s Mickey Harte feels that the worth of provincial titles
is falling all the time
"I’d like to think we were successful - people would maybe say
we underachieved and if we did then so be it. We brought a lot of joy and
happiness and I think we were good for the GAA. We got the blood boiling
in a lot of people and certainly brought a lot of entertainment."
Joe Kernan reflects on his time in charge of the Armagh footballers
“There is a lot of improvement in this team yet. We won the match on
Sunday but we were disappointed with aspects of our performance. We can
do better and we want to show how much better we can do.”
Tommy Breheny believes there is more in the tank of his Connacht football
champions after witnessing their display against Galway
“I guess in the Mayo match we were probably at our peak but we haven’t
been able to recapture that sort of intensity or ruthlessness since and
we paid the price. It’s hard to explain because we prepared very well
and we were really up for this game and we had no injuries. We have no excuses,
we just didn’t perform. Sligo wanted it more than we did.”
Peter Ford admits that his Galway football team have not hit the heights
since their brilliant display in dumping Mayo out of the Connacht championship