Forde hits out at the media backlash after loss to Cats

The Galway side were labelled as “gutless” by ex-manager Ger Loughnane and were highly criticised by a number of other sources in both local and national media following the display.

Forde who works as a teacher said: “If it’s acceptable in a local or national paper to absolutely castigate a bunch of lads then how do you go into a classroom as a secondary school teacher and say you can’t say this about people on social media.”

“As a secondary teacher myself, we cover things like bullying all the time in school. If this becomes acceptable in society as the norm in a local or national newspaper, radio, TV just to sensationalise things or maybe justify someone’s position in the job, then for society that’s not good for me. That’s what I would have a big issue with actually the personal attacks on people.”

Many experts believe that they are well within their rights to be critical of players who were fundamentally behind the removal of previous manager Anthony Cunningham despite reaching last year’s All-Ireland final. For many, it’s a time for the players to stand up and be counted after Cunningham’s resignation and excuses won’t be accepted at this point.

The Tribesmen take on Clare this weekend in Thurles in what is a season defining game for both sets of players and management. A defeat for either side ends their year in July, while the winner will only be two wins away from an All-Ireland title. The stakes are sky high.

When asked about whether the management used those comments as a motivational tool, Forde stated, “I don’t think so. You’re going out there in an All-Ireland quarter final. This is what we focused on all year and you know while there may be some people in Galway that take different views in regard to what happened last year, we are still doing this for Galway.”

“We are doing our best to get to an All-Ireland semi-final for our county and that has been the approach of players. They know they have to take a lot of flak but they are the lads who are willing to cross the white lines, they are the lads who are willing to get on with it and do their very best for themselves, for their clubs and for their county,” the Turloughmore clubman said.

Galway weren’t exactly disgraced in their performance against Kilkenny and they were leading at half-time. It did always feel like Kilkenny could raise their level of performance another couple of levels though and a second half Richie Hogan inspired performance meant Kilkenny ran out to a reasonably comfortable victory in the end.

When it was put to Forde had Galway scope for improvement? He was in agreement, “There is no question we have and I suppose in analysing the game we certainly highlighted areas where we didn’t make life easy for ourselves. We made a lot of mistakes in the game and that’s what we tended to focus on when looking back on the game.”

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.