Clinical Corofin are a class apart

Corofin 2-13

Salthill-Knocknacarra 0-7

PACE in two of its manifestations – physical and mental – set Corofin as a class apart on Sunday in one of the most one sided county football finals for decades.

As a spectacle for the neutral, this was yawn inducing fare, with several hundred spectators in the 4,000 crowd, exiting from Tuam Stadium long before the final whistle sounded, but this was not the fault of Corofin.

The lords and masters of Galway football since the early ‘90s, Corofin were full value for their 12 point winning margin and it could have been a lot more.

Corofin just played this county final at a different speed and tempo to a Salthill team that did try hard, but more often than not, they just couldn’t get their hands on the ball.

At the start of either half, with less than 20 seconds elapsed on the clock, Corofin had fired over points without a Salthill player getting a touch on the ball. This pattern just kept on repeating itself.

When Corofin led by 1-7 to 0-2 with just 18 minutes gone on the clock – having missed one penalty and scored another – the destination of the Frank Fox for 2013 was decided.

A lax 10 minutes towards the end of that first half, when Corofin made more mistakes than in the rest of the match, let in a shaft of light for Salthill as they trotted in for their interval tonic.

Three late first half points from Sean Armstrong, Seamie Crowe and hard working substitute Derek O’Flaherty left them just five behind at the break on a 1-7 to 0-5 scoreline.

Given Corofin’s early blitz, the scoreline represented a position of tentative hope for Salthill – what they needed was a reasonably solid start to the second half, but that was to be a forlorn aspiration.

Just as Mike Farragher had kicked the first point of the match in the opening 20 seconds, Ronan Steede replicated that score in even quicker time at the start of the second half.

The final act of demolition occurred less than two minutes later when a lightning Corofin attack ended with Farragher passing to Gary Sice, who booted to the net from close range.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.