Galway United captain Horgan apologies for “embarrassing” display

Cork City 4

Galway United 0

GALWAY United captain, Colm Horgan, has apologised to the club’s fans who travelled to Turners Cross on Friday night for his side’s performance, saying the players need to have “a good, long, hard look at ourselves” after a display which saw the home side coast to victory.

It was 30 minutes after the final whistle before the first United players started leaving the dressing room for the team bus outside the ground, coming out singly or in pairs. Heads were down, eye contact was avoided, but Horgan – clutching an ice pack to his right hand – was gracious enough to stop and give his assessment of a bitterly disappointing night for the visitors.

He was honest as ever, describing United’s second-half performance on Friday night as “embarrassing”, and he said the second-half displays against both Cork, and Drogheda the week before, were nowhere near the level expected.

“First and foremost, I need to apologise to the fans who came down. Fair play to them, they made the long trip down to Cork and that second-half performance was just embarrassing, we need to reassess things on Monday morning, and have a good long hard look at ourselves.

“The last two second halves in the last two games has been nowhere near the level that we expect from ourselves, and from that point of view, it is just not good enough,” was Horgan’s honest appraisal of the game.

United were well in the game at half-time, trailing to a goal that was the result of a mistake by goalkeeper, Ciaran Nugent, but for the second successive game, their performance levels completely dropped in the second 45 minutes.

The visitors had started well, without ever really threatening Mark McNulty in the City goal, but their early good work was undone by Nugent’s howler in the 15th minute.

Kevin O’Connor played along ball over the top from the left back position for Sean Maguire to race on to. Nugent advanced outside the penalty area and tried to control the ball on his knee, but he played it into the path of Sean Maguire, who nudged it past him and ran on to tap the ball into the unguarded goal.

United were inches away from getting back on levels terms two minutes later when former City man, Gavan Holohan, skated past a couple of defenders before trying to pick his spot from the edge of the box, but his curling effort went narrowly wide.

Both Padraic Cunningham – named in the starting XI at the expense of Vinny Faherty – and Lee Grace had also gone close for United in the opening 10 minutes; although it wasn’t all one-way traffic, with Nugent pulling off a full-stretch save to deny Maguire early on.