Galway footballers have a double reason to overcome Kildare in league final

IT’S time for Galway footballers to confront their Croke Park demons . . . and the Tribesmen have been handed the perfect opportunity of banishing their long-standing blues on Jones Road when facing Kildare in Sunday’s Division Two league decider (2pm).

For a county with such a proud footballing tradition, it almost defies believe that they haven’t won a solitary competitive match between league and championship at Croke Park since their big All-Ireland win over Meath in 2001.

Apart from drawing with Donegal in the 2003 championship quarter-final, Galway’s record at GAA headquarters over the past 15 years has blighted the title dreams of countless teams wearing the maroon and white.

The rot started when they lost the 2002 All-Ireland semi-final to Kerry (2-17 to 1-12) and since then they have also suffered championship losses to Cork (2005 and ’13), Kerry (2008 and ’14), Donegal (2015) and, arguably most infamously of all, against Tipperary in last year’s quarter-final.

When you throw in a National League final defeat to Kerry in 2004, together with a semi-final loss to Mayo in the same competition in 2007, it’s past time that Galway buried their Croke Park hoodoo.

It’s a terrible record by any standards and though it may not be even an issue in the Galway dressing-room, the county’s poor sequence of results in Dublin has to be lurking in the shadows.

Like good runs, bad ones also eventually come to an end, but the longer Galway go on without winning at Croke Park, the bigger the psychological barrier becomes. The ground has become a graveyard for them and that situation needs to change.

Though Galway have no reason to fear Kildare traditionally and have already achieved their main target of promotion from the league campaign, they will surely be highly motivated to claim some silverware and, in the process, kick the Croke Park jinx to touch.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.