Frustrating Galway let a winning hand slip

Down    1-17

Galway 1-16

The Galway supporter leaving Páirc Esler shortly after 3.30pm on Sunday who grumpily remarked that “wasn’t it one right sickener” probably summed up the spur of the moment reaction to a match that was quite simply thrown away.

Down only led in this match for the opening couple of minutes and in the final segment of time added on – for the intervening period, Galway seemed destined to record their third league win on the trot of their Division 2 National League Spring campaign.

In fairness, the frustration felt by the small band of travelling supporters in the crowd of about 4,000 related far more to the result than the performance. Over the course of the match, Galway put together some excellent passages of flowing football and really should have been ‘out the gate’ by half-time.

It was a bitter lesson for Kevin Walsh’s lively young team on the necessity of putting a team away after extended dominant periods of play, but in the final analysism a series of small mistakes – many of them from players who had otherwise played well – cost Galway this match.

Afterwards Walsh expressed the hope that, in the longer term context, Galway might end up learning more from the hurt of this defeat than from a victory – and in the greater context of the season, a one point defeat in an away March league match is not the end of the world.

When the hurt of this defeat eases and Galway re-focus for the home tie with Cavan on Sunday in Pearse Stadium, the learning process will be all about the next exam and Walsh needs no reminding that a return to winning ways will be the best antidote to the Newry defeat.

Galway led this match at the interval by 1-10 to 0-7  and would not have been flattered at the break had they gone in with 3-13 on the board given the succession of clear-cut chances that they created through a series of super-fast attacking moves and off-loads to players moving at full throttle.

Their fifth minute goal captured the best of what Galway were about last Sunday. Fiontán Ó Curraoin fetched majestically in the middle of the field and his long ball found Danny Cummins whose deft pass set up Patrick Sweeney for a cracking goal.

Michael Martin (4, 2 frees), Cummins (3, 1 free), Adrian Varley, Sean Denvir and Garreth Bradshaw delivered the points that capitalised on a real power display of midfield mastery from Ó Curraoin as at different times, Down looked like being completely over-ran.

But despite the fluency of that first-half display, occasional darker moments were emerging too for Galway at either end of the pitch. Donal O’Hare was giving a lot of bother in the left corner of the Down attack and on at least two occasions, the home side came within a whisker of finding the net.

It took one super fingertip touch from Enda Tierney on the half-hour mark to deny Down a certain goal and reinforcements will be needed in the Galway full-back line over the coming weeks, although they should be on the way, as a couple of Corofin defenders and Johnny Duane come back into the reckoning.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.