Antrim throw a blanket over hapless Galway men

Date Published: 19-Jul-2012

FRANK FARRAGHER

GALWAY’S 2012 competitive season began and ended in the North, but the after match atmosphere could hardly have been more different at the two locations – Derry and Belfast.

On the Sunday afternoon of February 5 last, Alan Mulholland had just seen his new team defeat Derry by 1-15 to 1-11 at Celtic Park – close on 100 Galway supporters waited on to cheer the team off the pitch.

More than double that Galway crowd travelled to Casement Park last Saturday, July 14, and how they would have wished for a repeat of that scoring tally in Derry – this time around there were glum faces, a lot of questions but alas not too many answers.

There’s a bit of Connacht pride on the line here to

o. By mid-July, Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim – after their great win over Wicklow – are still in the championship while Galway are facing into a blank canvas for the rest of the Summer.

In sport though, unless you’re a Kerry footballer, a Kilkenny hurler or a New Zealand rugby player, there are always going to be more defeats that victories, more moments of disappointment than elation and there’s only going to be one winner of any competition.

This week Alan Mulholland and his players will take their ‘bit of stick’ and some of it must be shouldered fair and square. We didn’t expect All-Irelands in Galway this year but there was a reasonable expectation that we would make a fair crack at the Connacht title . . . failing that, a half decent run in the qualifiers would have been an indication of some progress.

Over the past year though, there has been a fair bit of ‘evening out’ of teams across the country. In recent weeks, Wexford should have beaten the All-Ireland champions Dublin; Westmeath could have beaten Kerry; relegated Meath beat league winners Kildare and teams like Tipperary, Limerick and Sligo can give a game to anyone.

Okay at the end of the season, the All-Ireland will probably go down to the big three of Cork, Kerry and Dublin but a lot of the so-called lesser lights have shed their inferiority complex – last Saturday in Casement Park, it was the turn of Antrim to make the case for the ‘small man’.

In a way it was ideally set up for them. The bookies had made Galway 1/3 favourites and after their second half collapse against Sligo, there had to be vulnerability present. This year Antrim should have been beaten Monaghan in Ulster, and in the past they gave a real fright to Kerry in the qualifiers.

Most Galway followers who travelled north last Saturday didn’t expect an easy game but they did expect their side to win a tight enough match. Expectations though were quite horribly dashed. Galway didn’t play well, they couldn’t cope with the Ulster style of blanket defence, and they just lacked the nerve to see them through a tough match.

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