Footballers in a bad place following latest disaster

Inside Track with John McIntyre

Even making loose judgements about a team’s championship potential in the month of March can leave you a hostage to fortune, but these remain worrying times for the Galway footballers. After two rounds of the National League, the Tribesmen looked like an outfit going somewhere after several seasons in the doldrums  . . . only to implode in their subsequent three Division Two ties.

Without a Connacht title since 2008, supporters are again fearful that Galway are going nowhere and it’s hard not to blame them. We can’t remember the last time the men in maroon failed to register a single score in a second half of football or, for that matter, losing three league games in-a-row when apparently in control of each of them at the interval. On the surface, it’s the ultimate in carelessness and also underlines the lack of ruthlessness in their ranks.

New team manager Kevin Walsh, a hero of the county’s All-Ireland triumphs in 1998 and 2001, admitted after Galway’s latest collapse to Laois at Tuam Stadium on Sunday that “confidence levels were down” and that they paid the penalty for playing too much “safe football”. He was naturally disappointed with the outcome and acknowledged they were now in something of a relegation battle.

When Walsh was appointed as Alan Mulholland’s successor last autumn, there was genuine and widespread approval locally. The Killanin man had cut his teeth in inter-county management with Sligo and during a largely progressive tenure, he was unlucky not to win a Connacht title with them. Against that background, he was always top of the pile when Galway went seeking a new boss after the 2014 championship.

Early League wins over Meath and Westmeath, albeit lucky to come away with full points from Mullingar, together with positive reports of a strong commitment to punishing preparation on the training ground, boded well for the 2015 championship. Galway then appeared poised to maintain their winning league run against Down in Newry, but spurned chances and a failure to close the deal allowed the home team to reel them in before the finish.

Galway led by 1-15 to 0-11 after 60 minutes but alarmingly were unable to protect that advantage, eventually losing to an injury-time Paul Devlin free. The nature of that defeat obviously had a major impact on the squad’s brittle confidence levels judging by their subsequent flattering efforts against both Cavan and Laois – two teams who won’t be mapped at the business end of this year’s championships.

Worse again, both those losses have come on home soil and, to compound the sense of gloom, each of those defeats were remarkably similar to what happened in Newry, only that Galway were further adrift at the finish. Falling to Cavan was bad enough at Pearse Stadium, but last Sunday presented Galway with an opportunity to get back on track and without doing anything spectacular, they seemed on course to stop the rot when leading Laois by 0-10 to 1-1 at the interval, especially as the Midlanders’ goal was the product of calamitous defending.

Galway would have to face the strong wind on the resumption, but surely they would have learned from the mistakes from their previous two outings. Instead, it was more of the same panic orientated defensive type football which is alien to the country’s tradition. Laois were no great shakes, but they eventually drew level with a Ross Munnelly effort three minutes from time. The game still wasn’t up for the hosts only for them to fall apart altogether.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.