Galway can exploit another good draw in qualifiers

Dara Bradley

GALWAY footballers had to treat their first-round qualifier against Tipperary last weekend a bit like professional American sportspeople approach games: ‘A win isn’t everything; it’s the only thing’.

It should be no different this coming Saturday in the second round of the backdoor qualifiers as Galway welcome another Munster minnow to Pearse Stadium, Waterford, at 2.30pm. It will be the first senior football championship pairing between the teams.

The four point victory over Tipperary last week will certainly do wonders for Galway’s confidence levels but scratch beneath the surface and a fragility still remains in the psyche of the players from that 17-points shocker against Mayo in the Connacht championship.

The Mayo mauling rocked them to the core, which is why a result last Saturday – and again this Saturday regardless of the performance – is all that matters, as the Galway management attempts to pick up the pieces and rebuild.

A decent performance would, of course, be welcome, but Galway really just needs a win, because to lose to Division Four outfit, Waterford, would plunge the county’s football fraternity into despair altogether.  

Galway was somewhat fortunate to have drawn Waterford – it could have been Tyrone, don’t forget, who are genuine All-Ireland contenders – but regardless of who they are playing, selector Alan Flynn says Galway need to focus on themselves.

“To be honest, we’re still trying to recover from our performance against Mayo,” he said. So, in a sense, it doesn’t really matter who we play because we are trying to get our own game right. There are lots of things that we didn’t do well against Mayo that we have to work on, and regardless of who we are playing we will have to improve on those areas.

“It was the same last week against Tipperary, there are areas we need to focus our improvement on this week. Obviously you might set up differently for different opponents but generally we will have to just keep working on increasing the percentages of our own performance, regardless of the opponents,” said Flynn.

The Galway mentor added that there was an extra pep in Galway’s step at training Tuesday, and he complimented the attitude and hard work of the players since exiting the provincial race.

“They really have worked extremely hard in training. Credit where it’s due, they’ve worked hard and in fairness they’ve responded to the defeat to Mayo by putting in a huge effort,” he said.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune