City side Walzer in to last four after marathon tie

Salthill-Knocknacarra 3-13

Milltown 1-16

After extra-time

After two weekends, over 160 minutes of football, five goals and two sending offs, it was Salthill-Knocknacarra who finally bagged the final spot in the semi-finals of the Senior Football championship courtesy of a late Robert Walzer goal.

Just like a week earlier in Tuam Stadium, there was little to separate the two teams, but it took a point at the death from Sean Armstrong to bring the game to extra time before Walzer pounced on 77 minutes to set up a date with Mountbellew-Moylough next Sunday.

In a very open game of football that saw just eight of the 33 scores come from placed balls, the result never seemed predictable with no more than three points separating the sides across the 80 minutes of action and the teams drawing level on eight occasions.

Having home field advantage, it was the city side who came out of blocks faster, John Maher winning the throw-in and setting up Sean Armstrong for the game’s opening score after just 15 seconds.

Salthill were dominating possession early on but throughout the first-half would be punished for some poor shooting, hitting three wides inside the opening three minutes and finishing with an overall first-half tally of eight that stopped them ever going away from their opponents.

Going long from the kick-outs was resulting in Milltown losing possession time after time, but once they began reverting to short attempts and running at the former All-Ireland champions, they were seeing a much better return as a fine diagonal ball set up Eoin Mannion for their first score on six minutes.

While Milltown favoured running Anthony Finnerty’s side were more inclined to kick their way from A to B while Maher was helping to sweep up anything that went around the middle and quickly turn defence into attack in one killer pass.

His workrate set up two scores for Armstrong and Andrew Butler to regain the lead before another pinpoint pass gave Evan Murphy the space to run at Milltown, ducking and weaving his way around numerous challenges only for his low goal attempt to just drift wide.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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