“Maybe some people can say we might have over-celebrated a bit, but any day you beat one of the best teams that has played football for 10, 15 years, you should be very, very happy.
“I know there’s nothing won, but we’ll get them calmed down. We’ll get them back again here in two weeks time, ready for an All-Ireland semi final.”
While it marked a first championship win for Galway over Dublin since 1934, Joyce noted that the meetings have been sporadic. “I played for Galway for 14 years,” he said. “I never came across Dublin in a championship game. We only played them a couple of times, so I wouldn’t read too much into that stat.”
He admired the way his side came back from five points down and overcame further injuries to captain Sean Kelly and talented marksman Shane Walsh, neither of whom were able to finish the match.
“Look, even the first half, I just felt that probably showed a little bit too much respect. In a way, didn’t push out enough. But obviously, I felt that Dublin when they started the three lads (James McCarthy, Jack McCaffrey and Paul Mannion), they were going to come at us hard. We knew that, we probably didn’t start our games as tough, as good as we should, the last couple of games.
“So they had the aces, probably on the pitch from the start, no more than ourselves. So it was a real battle, real proper championship match, gung-ho all the time. Some fantastic football played on both sides. Fantastic scores, blocked tackles.
“Very hard to watch it when you’re on the line and you’re only trying to watch one team. But I’m sure people talk about rule changes being made in football but is there a need after watching a game like that, I’m not so sure. But yeah, delighted yeah.”
He identified a good start to the second half, after trailing by four points at the midpoint, as critical.
“Right after half time, that score Cillian (McDaid) got and that’s what we targeted the first five, ten minutes after half time, just solely, because if Dublin got the first one or two scores, sure it was game over, they were six up.
“So for us to claw back and keep in the game and take it down the stretch, and you know, we’ve been questioned before in the past about soft mentality, not closing games out.
“But fair play to the boys, we still made hard work. We were two up, Johnny Heaney came on the run and probably should have stayed going, he’d a man inside for a goal chance, but kicked it wide. And lucky that didn’t come back to haunt us, to be honest.”
He reflected on the team selection, notably the decision to start Damien Comer and Shane Walsh despite injury concerns.
“You’re a genius when it works out and you’re a clown when it doesn’t work out. There was no point in us having a bench full of Damien Comers and Shane Walshs and then bringing them on and trying to chase the game from seven or eight points down. We took a gamble on it and tried to keep them in the game as long as we can. We tried to keep Damien as close to the goal as we could, which worked out all right. Cein D’Arcy had a bit of a knock, he was a loss to us but then he came on. Obviously, the nature of injuries, we played the last six, seven, eight minutes with probably 13 fully fit bodies on the pitch, unfortunately. But we got over it.”
That included the loss of captain, Kelly, in the first half.
“He’s our leader, but it’s a pleasing thing for me as manager that we can just make a change, Cein D’Arcy can come in and there’s nothing affected. That’s probably a by-product of us having injuries at the start of the year, we’ve developed our squad an awful lot during the league and the Connacht championship. And we have 26 lads now and when you look back at the bench behind you, they can all make an impact, which is great.”
He said that the injury to Walsh which forced his substitution after 65 minutes didn’t “look too good” but said the two week break will give him a chance to recover for the semi finals.
“We’ve played three games in 14 days and they were hard-hitting games against Armagh, Monaghan and Dublin, three top quality sides. The lads’ bodies are sore, there’s no doubt about that. We’ll have a chat out the road here in the Glenroyal when we get out and we’ll see where we go. We’ll probably leave them away for a day or two, re-assess it, watch the games tomorrow and see who we get in the draw, and get ourselves fit for two weeks’ time.”
An All-Ireland semi-final will be a huge lift for the county, Joyce said.
“It’s great for Galway, it’s great for supporters, I thought they were brilliant. I know no-one gave us a prayer, quietly they’d be texting you saying ‘I hope you do well’, but the people inside the room that mattered knew that we had a great chance. We knew what we had to do, and thankfully, it came off and at least our supporters can get excited about two weeks’ time again.”
