Sport

Cunningham not willing to risk Canning just yet

THE ABSENCE of Joe Canning in the Galway team caused a minor ripple of surprise but it was a decision taken last Friday night…

Mon Jun 04 2012 - 01:00

THE ABSENCE of Joe Canning in the Galway team caused a minor ripple of surprise but it was a decision taken last Friday night as manager Anthony Cunningham explained: “He has improved a good bit but he hadn’t come on enough so medically they were saying not to chance him. We would hope to have him back for the next day.

“It’s a shoulder ligament injury near the A/C joint that he picked up in a training match. We probably could have played him if it was later in the championship. We probably would have risked him.”

The Galway manager was philosophical in evaluating his team’s performance, concerned by some of the defending but pleased with aspects of the team dynamics.

“We’ve loads of work and we are facing Offaly, which will be some battle. They had a great championship win on Saturday night (against Wexford).”

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He paid generous tribute to the work Westmeath manager Brian Hanley has done with the county hurling team.

The man in question, Hanley, was honest in his appraisal of the afternoon in Mullingar.

“We probably didn’t defend as well as we did against Antrim, but we take a lot of positives from it. We won the second half with that wind.

“Every time we got into it in the second half we gave them a score back. It’s very hard to rate that game. Our goals and aims aren’t going to be as high as Galway’s goals and aims. To that end we’re happy.

“We’ve got Wexford at home I believe in the next game so we’ll just go and target that. That defending won’t be good enough to beat them. We’ll have to start working on that straight away.”

He paid tribute to several of his younger players and in particular Niall O’Brien, who scored 2-7.

“One thing in Westmeath and I’m only here a short while, I said it in the very first interview I did that I couldn’t believe the quality of hurlers.

“It’s a matter of getting a game plan and the belief that they can do it. We’re getting there. We’ve made strides. This was a better performance than last year.

“There were seven under-21s playing there today and three minors. You had Tommy Gallagher coming on, he showed a bit of form in the last few days, no harm blooding him.”