He has a point to be fair.
Galway’s victory over Armagh in the quarter finals of the All-Ireland will truly go down as one of the best, most exciting games of football, ever to grace Croke Park.
Armagh cultivated a decent lead only for Galway to rally back, and then when the Orchard county looked dead and buried, six points down after the 70th minute, they muster up the mother of all comebacks.
Two late goals saw them still a point down, the clock had ticked over the allotted injury time, and then they win a free kick past the 45m line.
No words can describe the difficulty of this kick, first with its distance, the incredible accuracy that would be needed, and the mounting pressure that was tipping well past boiling point in Croke Park.
Up stepped the coolest man in the stadium however, as Rian O’Neill composed himself, and kicked the equaliser of all equalisers.
What a treat the game was, that was until the two teams couldn’t help themselves as they headed to the dressing rooms, and that word had to be brought up again – melee.
Photo by Daire Brennan/SportsfileThe word ‘melee’ didn’t used to carry much meaning or weight, but just like when they added ‘lol’ to the dictionary, it’s now overused to the point that it’s almost commonplace in everyday language.
Everyone seemed to be involved, but a truly despicable moment occurred when an Armagh squad player appeared to attempt to gauge Damien Comer’s eyes, and all hell broke loose.
It eventually simmered down, and Galway went on to win on penalties – as if the game couldn’t get more dramatic as it was.
Former Donegal star Eamon McGee had been tweeting about the wonderful spectacle we were all witnessing, but following the tunnel braw that broke out at full time, he just couldn’t help himself and poked fun at the Ulster side.
“What a game. Rian O’Neil shows his brilliance and then Armagh continue on their journey of an all out melee with every county in Ireland. Not many left to tick off by this stage.”
This is of course in reference to the fact that Armagh were famously involved in a huge ruckus at the Athletic Grounds in February, in a game that saw Tyrone have four players sent off.
https://twitter.com/EamonMcGee/status/1541066628825219072
Then they were involved in something similar against Donegal in the last game of the league, which resulted in several suspensions, which were then all overturned.
So now with Galway added to the list, it means they have been directly involved in this sort of behaviour against three different counties in the 2022 season, which is almost an impressive feat.
