‘We lived to fight another day’ - Donegal Masters manager Eddie Crawford

It was not pretty on Thursday night at the Sligo Centre of Excellence as Donegal and Sligo Masters All-Ireland semi-final ended in darkness and all square on the scoreboard.

There was plenty of controversy with the referee getting plenty of advice from large sets of subs from both sides along the sideline. The game was level at 1-10 to 0-13 at the end of normal time and after six minutes of extra-time it was still level at Sligo 1-11, Donegal 0-14, but by that stage there was not even enough light to take penalties so a replay will be needed to see which of these sides plays in the All-Ireland Masters final.

“It was a bit of a mess. But all in all we’re glad to get out of here with a draw. We didn’t perform the night we should.

“We knew Sligo would be tough, that they would be battle hardened. They seem to get the rub of the mill all the time with the ball and what I think were soft frees at times. And the penalty before half-time sort of left us four points behind at the time,” said Donegal Masters manager, Eddie Crawford, who said he had a discussion with the umpire about the penalty decision. There was a question of a throw-ball before the ball was put over the bar in the first place.

“Listen, you can’t play a match without a referee so I’m not going to argue about referee decisions. We showed great character in the second half to come back into it. We were down and out and a couple of points behind late on.

“We still showed great character again and it’s what we always do. We kept driving and driving. Then Benny (Boyle) and Donnacha (Gallagher) got big scores. We know that Donnacha has that in him and I had seen that with the club (Glenswilly).

“Listen, we lived to fight another day and I’m happy enough with that.”

There was something of a dilemma at the end of normal time with light fading fast, but there was a decision taken to play three minutes each way and then go to penalties.

“We played three minutes each way of extra-time which you know yourself, is not sufficient. It was to go to penalties. But it wasn’t practical because of the light,” said Crawford, who agreed that the game should have been blown up at the end of normal time.

“We’re happy enough with a replay. We got out of here. I’ll admit that Sligo played very well. They did the business on us. They had a game plan which seemed to work for them.“Some of our big game players didn’t play well for us tonight. But listen, we have lots of things to work on. I can’t see us being any worse the next day. So it is all positive now,” said Crawford, who hopes to have Sean McDaid and Enda Bonner back for the replay.

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“Hopefully, we might get a home draw as well, which would be nice. But if it’s a midweek game it will have to start at 7 o’clock.

“I’m proud of the boys the way they finished the game and we’ll see where the replay takes us,” said Crawford.