{"id":533150,"date":"2026-07-04T19:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T19:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/533150\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T19:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T19:37:09","slug":"ben-oconnor-rejects-comparison-to-all-ireland-final-collapse-after-defeat-to-galway-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/533150\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben O\u2019Connor rejects comparison to All-Ireland final collapse after defeat to Galway \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A full house of 82,300 was dispersing from Croke Park by the time Miche\u00e1l Donoghue shared his thoughts on his team\u2019s rampant second-half performance against Cork<\/a>. Barely a handful would have been as calm as the Galway<\/a> manager as he tried to make sense of it all.<\/p>\n

It was all a far cry from their lacklustre championship defeats to Kilkenny and Tipperary a year ago, which he acknowledged when he addressed the question about whether he was shocked with how far his team had come.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d have to say yeah,\u201d Donoghue said, though it felt like exactly that \u2013 he had to say it, even if he didn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut from early on when we came back, you could just see the enthusiasm and the energy that was in the group. They\u2019ve stayed humble, they stayed working. We have our own targets and goals, and what we want to achieve.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think throughout the league and throughout the championship, as the team has evolved and as they\u2019ve got more comfortable with what we wanted to do, we\u2019ve had some really good second-half performances.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we knew that if we were in the position we were in going into the second half, that we were well capable of pushing on again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cork’sCork\u2019s Mark Coleman challenges Galway’s Conor Whelan. Photograph: James Crombie\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Pushing on was an understatement. Galway\u2019s tackling was ravenous, the rate at which they created chances was more than enough to compensate for their mediocre conversion, and inevitably, comparisons were drawn with Cork\u2019s second-half collapse in last year\u2019s All-Ireland final against Tipperary. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf ye say so\u201d was Ben O\u2019Connor\u2019s brisk response to that parallel being drawn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a new bunch. Every one of them fellas, same as they did last year, came up to do as good as they could today,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t happen for us. We were outworked and out-hurled for long periods of it, and still with 10 minutes to go we were still in it. For the last seven or eight minutes, they really took over.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not a true reflection of our lads. For everyone watching today, people are saying \u2018Oh, Cork again\u2019, but we\u2019re better than that, we just didn\u2019t do it today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a couple of chances to put the ball over the bar and get set again but we didn\u2019t, we tried to force goals. It was very easy for us to on the outside at the sideline and say tap the ball over the bar, but if you\u2019re looking up at the clock and you\u2019re seeing it running out … the boys had the guts to go for it, they thought the goal chances were there so they went for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re telling fellas to do that all year, so I can\u2019t be going around now saying we didn\u2019t want them to go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cork'sCork’s Robbie O’Flynn after the match. Photograph: Ryan Byrne\/Inpho <\/p>\n

For Donoghue, questions of the future were straightforward, batted away with the normal stuff about recovery and review. For O\u2019Connor, the landscape is very different. Cork\u2019s implosion against Tipperary last season was unprecedented, but after this, the label will have stronger adhesive, removal won\u2019t be so straightforward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a glass half-full kind of fella, that\u2019s done and dusted,\u201d said O\u2019Connor, albeit without specifying what was in the glass.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were better than us on the day, they outworked us and out-hurled us, no excuses. We\u2019ll be sick with that for the next few days, next couple of weeks, maybe even until Christmas. But once the boys get back going again, that\u2019s all forgotten about.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019ll be a lot of fellas who will have all the answers, and we\u2019ll get that. We\u2019ll get a few letters during the week telling us where we\u2019re all going wrong, we\u2019ll get a few phone calls, a few messages. We\u2019ll take that and we\u2019ll drive on.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for Galway? Cruise control, effectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re totally comfortable where we\u2019re at,\u201d said Donoghue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve full trust and belief in the group and the quality that they have. They\u2019re still a young group and they\u2019re still learning and evolving. They\u2019ll still have good days and bad days, but today was a good one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A full house of 82,300 was dispersing from Croke Park by the time Miche\u00e1l Donoghue shared his thoughts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30883,1964,92418,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-533150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-galway-gaa","tag-cork-gaa","tag-hurling-championship","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}