Champs just do enough against below par rivals

Date Published: 17-Sep-2009

T should have been the highlight of this year’s Galway senior football championship but it turned out to be the dampest of all squibs as Corofin made light work of dumping a hapless Salthill/Knocknacarra out of the title race in convincing fashion at Tuam Stadium on Sunday.
A county semi-final clash between these two former All-Ireland winning club champions should have been full of intensity, passion and fire. Instead, it was like being promised a ’99 with a scrumptious chocolate flake only to be handed a Wibbly Wobbly Wonder in its place.
It was like the calm after the storm. The fervour of the game preceding this involving Mountbellew and Caltra was certainly not replicated as Salthill collapsed into submission from an early stage.
The old saying about goals winning games certainly rang true as far as this county semi-final was concerned as Corofin netted two in the first half while Salthill never really came close to bagging one . . . and that was really the difference.
Corofin were defensively superior throughout, had the advantage at midfield and plucked the crucial scores at important times during the game to ensure that Salthill were always at arms’ length.
While Salthill did reduce the margin to two points during the second half, they were relying on too few players to salvage something from this match and eventually Corofin just drove home their superiority – without any great difficulty.
It will also be no great comfort to Salthill that Corofin do not possess the best set of forwards in the county and still could manage to rack up two goals and 10 points – it is a performance that the city side would sooner forget.
The two goals from Kieran Comer in the 15th minute and his first cousin Michael Comer in the 24th just knocked the stuffing out of Salthill and they knew that the game was up at this stage. They were involved in a dour match and they simply weren’t playing well.
County star Sean Armstrong was trying his heart out but was receiving little support from those around him and even Seamie Crowe, who is normally deadly accurate from play and frees, was having an off day.
And with Corofin leading by five points at half time, it was easy to understand the exodus from the stand and the terraces as the game never lived up to its billing and the end result already looked inevitable.
There were times when one would have hoped that the referee would have called these two teams together and instructed them to engage in a contest – such was the lackluster nature of this timid encounter.
The bottom line is that Corofin did enough to win and were not pushed to do anything more. They were probably surprised by Salthill’s lack of purpose and the ease in which they ambled into the county final.
Corofin will put a lot of store into the fact that their defence never allowed Salthill the smell of a goal with Kieran Fitzgerald, Cathal Silke, Alan Burke and Damien Burke closing down numerous attacks. Only four of Salthill’s 10 scores came from play.