Footballers in with big boys now after taming Tipperary

Inside Track with John McIntyre

If you were told before last Saturday night’s All-Ireland football qualifier in Tullamore that Tipperary would lead by 0-6 to 0-4 after 20 minutes and that the championship’s most progressive team of early summer would bang home three goals as the match reached its climax, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it would be curtains for Galway.

In between, however, the Tribesmen called most of the shots against the Munster minnows, highlighted by their decisive four-goal burst in a seven minute spell either side of the interval. Galway’s edge in pace and class was never more than stark than in this period, but for the rest of a strange and largely unfulfilling contest they were no better than average.

Yet, the concession of those three late Tipperary goals took the gloss off Galway coming through relatively comfortably what many had built up as a potentially difficult fixture for them. It was a sobering finish ahead of Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Kerry, but that may be no bad thing as the squad will carry a sense of annoyance into Croke Park.

Overall, it was hard to escape the overall conclusion which has followed this Galway team around all summer: that they have an emerging midfield alliance; decent forwards; but a porous backline. James O’Donoghue and company will take much more policing up front than Tipperary did and, on last Saturday’s evidence, Galway don’t possess the quality to handle them.

Still, they will carry some momentum into the quarter-final and their largely young outfit could thrive in Croke Park, especially in a game they won’t be given much chance of winning and facing a county they have traditionally performed well enough against. Furthermore, the Kerry team has undergone major surgery in 2014 and Cork were so bad in the Munster final that it’s hard to take the Kingdom’s convincing win entirely at face value.

Galway do have a chance of pulling off their single biggest victory in over a decade, but the backline will need huge help from their outfield colleague, while Fiontán Ó Curraoin and Thomas Flynn can’t take as long to find their feet as was the case against Tipperary. Up front, they need to convert virtually take every chance that comes their way. Certainly, the type of deflating wides which Michael Martin and Danny Cummins kicked early on in Tullamore will have to be consigned to the shredder.

Satrurday’s qualifier never rose to any great heights or really energised the crowd of around 8,000. Both teams were jittery; there were too many unforced errors; and despite the impression the final scoreline might give, this was an encounter short of real drama. Tipperary probably didn’t do themselves on the evening and arguably suffered some stage fright even if in wing back Colin O’Riordan they had one of the most influential players on the field.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.