Dick Clerkin

It was like I was talking to the audience team.

We cover sport and we have things like this.

This is an Irish independent podcast.

Listen, he had everything in the game and in a strange way, no team, Galway included, you could tell in Pádraig Joyce's post-match comments, yes, he lost the game, but he felt, and his team will feel walking out of there, that they're in a better place leaving it than they came in, in terms of his ultimate ambition is to win all Ireland.

So,

There was just an overwhelming feel-good factor about the game, you know, in terms of the spectacle, the quality.

Like, the more I see inter-country football now at every grade, the pace, the physicality, the relentlessness.

Like, the pace at which these guys are going in the 70th minute versus the first, it's just frightening.

Like, some of these guys, these healings,

They're almost unmarkable, you know, with the pace that they go at in terms of their technical ability to hold the ball in close contact and then to be able to write tactics.

Oh my God, and they're backing themselves.

We talked here about Galway, one of their strengths is their defence and their ability for their man markers to sort of tag the threats that are coming.

conceded 321.

Like, you know, we're breaking records here, left, right and centred.

I'd be surprised if that Galway group with Porrick Joyce has conceded that in Championship football in his five years or anywhere close to it.

But such was the, I suppose, the positivity.

Now,

I've said it here several times, the bloody wind in the hay, like how many games do we watch?

Like it is, you can't underestimate it, having been there several times, how big an impact it plays on the dynamic of the game.

Like you've seen where Scummon chose to play against it in the first half.