Galway manager Padraic Joyce described their 2023 campaign as a "poor season overall", admitting they had no one to blame but themselves for their early exit from the championship.
Having been pitched into a nightmare preliminary quarter-final against neighbours Mayo following the concession of a late winner against Armagh last weekend, Galway were unable to protect a five-point half-time lead when facing into a stiff breeze after the break.
A third-quarter surge put Mayo in a commanding position and despite a rally in the closing stages, Galway couldn't retrieve the situation and wound up beaten by a point.
It means that the 2022 All-Ireland finalists - even tentatively installed as favourites by many observers early in the round-robin phase - tumble out of the championship at the preliminary quarter-final stage.
Speaking to a scrum of reporters in bowels of Pearse Stadium afterwards, Joyce bluntly declared it a "poor season" for Galway.
"The competition is the competition. We've no one to blame but ourselves. Remember that. Mayo were probably a bit better than us today. But we just missed too much.
"Even last week against Armagh... we shouldn't have been in this position here today. But we are and we're out in the championship now. It's a bitter pill to swallow.
"We had the same points in the group [as Armagh] and the best scoring difference. But we've no one to blame but ourselves for that. We didn't win the game or draw the game last week. We just have to accept it and move on from it. That's all we can do.
"It's a very, very disappointing year. That's the bottom line. There's no point trying to gloss it over. We won Connacht, lost the league final, wasn't a bad year [in that sense]. But being knocked out before the quarter-finals is a poor season overall."
Joyce insisted that Damien Comer's withdrawal at half-time due to his recurrent hamstring injury wasn't decisive either way, and that Galway had enough chances to win regardless.
"It's a tightness on his hamstring. He has a hamstring injury so he's prone to them. He just felt he couldn't get moving. If he stayed on, he would have ripped it so we had to take him out.
"You want your best players on the pitch as much as you can. We didn't get a huge rub of the green this year with knocks and injuries. That happens.
"Damien going off the pitch wasn't the winning and losing of the game. We'd still loads of chances in the second half there. We'd a great goal chance. We'd a couple of wild shots at goal that we should be tapping over the bar."
Captain Sean Kelly was pegged as a doubt for the game during the week, after hobbling off in the final few minutes against Mayo. While he completed the game, he wasn't moving as freely as normal.
"He wasn't 100% fit but he was fit enough to take part in the game," said Joyce. "I think he made a big contribution to the game. He's our captain, he's our leader. He's one of our main men. If he's any way right, he'll play, always."
"You want your best players on the pitch as much as you can. We didn't get a huge rub of the green this year with knocks and injuries. That happens.
With a characteristic Salthill gale at their back in the first half, Galway could only rustle up an 0-08 to 0-03 lead, snatching at a couple of chances and missing a couple of poor frees.
Worse again, that lead was wiped out in a sloppy ten-minute spell at the beginning of the second half.
"We probably should have been 10-2 or 11-2 up at half-time. Missed some simple frees that we shouldn't be missing.
"[At half-time] we said we'd go out and try and nick another score or two. But instead of that, we turned the ball over three times in our first three attacks and they've got two scores.
"Then the goal, the full-back [going] up the pitch, no one laid a hand on him for 50 or 60 yards. That's totally against our grain, doing that. It's very hard to recover from that."
As regards Matthew Tierney's gilt-edged goal chance midway through the second half, Joyce remarked: "To me, you round the keeper all the day long. Mattie knows that. Even in the first half, Damien [Comer] had a shot, which was too high.
"You'll get about two goal chances in a match as we know and if you don't take them, you're going to struggle.
"0-12 won't win many games for you. Our defence was really really good again. Our structure was very good.
"Seven scores from 18 shots in open play tells its own story from our side.
"The lads put in a massive effort. They're great lads, they're a credit to the county. They've taken the county a long way last year and this year.
"It's another year gone by again for Galway."
