Gallagher: We need to start winning
Credit: Extratime Team (ETPhotos)
James Gallagher believes his players have been the victims of some ‘ridiculous’ decisions from referee’s this season, as the Harps boss found himself counting the cost of another sending off against Salthill Devon on Friday evening.
For the third home game in a row, Harps ended the game with just ten men on the pitch, as Marc Brolly joined Mark Forker and Tommy Bonnar as players to have incurred the referee’s wrath.
Brolly’s, like Forker’s, was debatable, but, having gone in from the side with his studs showing, it left little room for argument by today’s standard, despite a lack of intent or malice.
The incident came just minutes after Victor Collins was dismissed for two quick-fire bookings and Gallagher felt the official wasted no time in levelling the playing field by going straight for his back-pocket once more.
Gallagher said: “We can do without it but what we could do with is referees reffing the game. He’s sent off a Salthill lad and just goes looking to send off one of our lads. Yeah, he (Brolly) goes sliding in and it’s probably a yellow card but to throw out a straight red card on that is definitely something we can do without; he’s just back from injury.
“But I can’t do anything about that, the players and myself can do anything about that, it's gone border-line ridiculous at this stage.”
The Harps manager, clearly dejected, continued by questioning the general standard of refereeing in the league, but felt powerless with his grievances.
He added: “I try and not to get too involved with the referee’s but first of all he said he was playing four minutes of injury time and then he blows it up thirty seconds early so I just asked him about that.
“As regards, the red card I didn’t say anything about that because there’s no point, there’s absolutely no point. There’s no point us even standing here discussing it because nobody is listening and yet it’s costing us dearly.
“Players just want to go and play football but then they go and throw a red card about, they go up the road happy as Larry (with the job they’ve done) but they’ve left a young fella on the sidelines for two or three games. It’s ridiculous and it’s happening all over the country.”
The sending off, nevertheless, failed to mask a poor performance against a side who have scored just two goals and managed to pick up just one point from their previous five games.
Harps did improve slightly in the second half but never had their opponents up against the ropes, even in that six minute spell between the two sending-offs.
“It was a disappointing first half, you could tell that we didn’t have a game last weekend and you could tell that we didn’t have many at training last week, so it probably took the boys a good forty-five minutes to open up their lungs.
“We went and played a wee bit better in the second half and in fairness to Salthill, where they knocked the ball about and we couldn’t get close to them, we probably did that in the second half and more, but without having that penetrative pass or bit extra to get you the goal.
“We had a lot of the possession in the second half but a lot of it was side to side, we would go forward and then we would come back, not really getting in behind them.
“It’s very frustrating, it’s another draw and certainly we need to start picking up three points and we need to do that fairly quickly,” said Gallagher.
Four league games in and Harps are still searching for their first three points and with three of the next four trips coming away from home, it certainly doesn’t fill the mind with optimism.
“They’re all difficult, we knew tonight was going to be a difficult game. A lot of sides have noticed an improvement with Salthill but we’d like to think we’ve improved as well and like I said before the game it’s one I would expect to win and get three points in.
“You’ll only do that if the appetite and hunger is right, which it wasn’t really in the first half and, although we hadn’t played in two weeks, we don’t want to be making too many excuses. Salthill were decent in the first half and we were quite good in the second but didn’t do enough to get the three points,” said Gallagher.
For the third home game in a row, Harps ended the game with just ten men on the pitch, as Marc Brolly joined Mark Forker and Tommy Bonnar as players to have incurred the referee’s wrath.
Brolly’s, like Forker’s, was debatable, but, having gone in from the side with his studs showing, it left little room for argument by today’s standard, despite a lack of intent or malice.
The incident came just minutes after Victor Collins was dismissed for two quick-fire bookings and Gallagher felt the official wasted no time in levelling the playing field by going straight for his back-pocket once more.
Gallagher said: “We can do without it but what we could do with is referees reffing the game. He’s sent off a Salthill lad and just goes looking to send off one of our lads. Yeah, he (Brolly) goes sliding in and it’s probably a yellow card but to throw out a straight red card on that is definitely something we can do without; he’s just back from injury.
“But I can’t do anything about that, the players and myself can do anything about that, it's gone border-line ridiculous at this stage.”
The Harps manager, clearly dejected, continued by questioning the general standard of refereeing in the league, but felt powerless with his grievances.
He added: “I try and not to get too involved with the referee’s but first of all he said he was playing four minutes of injury time and then he blows it up thirty seconds early so I just asked him about that.
“As regards, the red card I didn’t say anything about that because there’s no point, there’s absolutely no point. There’s no point us even standing here discussing it because nobody is listening and yet it’s costing us dearly.
“Players just want to go and play football but then they go and throw a red card about, they go up the road happy as Larry (with the job they’ve done) but they’ve left a young fella on the sidelines for two or three games. It’s ridiculous and it’s happening all over the country.”
The sending off, nevertheless, failed to mask a poor performance against a side who have scored just two goals and managed to pick up just one point from their previous five games.
Harps did improve slightly in the second half but never had their opponents up against the ropes, even in that six minute spell between the two sending-offs.
“It was a disappointing first half, you could tell that we didn’t have a game last weekend and you could tell that we didn’t have many at training last week, so it probably took the boys a good forty-five minutes to open up their lungs.
“We went and played a wee bit better in the second half and in fairness to Salthill, where they knocked the ball about and we couldn’t get close to them, we probably did that in the second half and more, but without having that penetrative pass or bit extra to get you the goal.
“We had a lot of the possession in the second half but a lot of it was side to side, we would go forward and then we would come back, not really getting in behind them.
“It’s very frustrating, it’s another draw and certainly we need to start picking up three points and we need to do that fairly quickly,” said Gallagher.
Four league games in and Harps are still searching for their first three points and with three of the next four trips coming away from home, it certainly doesn’t fill the mind with optimism.
“They’re all difficult, we knew tonight was going to be a difficult game. A lot of sides have noticed an improvement with Salthill but we’d like to think we’ve improved as well and like I said before the game it’s one I would expect to win and get three points in.
“You’ll only do that if the appetite and hunger is right, which it wasn’t really in the first half and, although we hadn’t played in two weeks, we don’t want to be making too many excuses. Salthill were decent in the first half and we were quite good in the second but didn’t do enough to get the three points,” said Gallagher.
