Galway footballers fail to impress in fending off limited Leitrim challenge

IT was more hard watch than it was hard won. Anyone travelling to Carrick-on-Shannon on Sunday hoping Galway might beat Leitrim out-the-gap was bitterly disappointed.

Kevin Walsh’s men did nothing more than get the job done, with an eight-point Connacht Championship quarter-final victory, 1-13 to 0-8, over their hosts.

At times it was a hard slog but, just like in New York a fortnight previous, there was never really any sense that Leitrim would upset the odds, even though they created a few decent goal chances.

It was a boring game to watch; scrappy, dominated by defences, littered with errors and polluted with unnecessary fouling. It lacked championship intensity, too.

The crowd of 5,400 certainly did not get value for money for their tickets, which were priced a bit steep by the Connacht Council at €25 for the stand.

That matters little to the winners, who have, as expected, booked a semi-final clash with Mayo on Sunday, June 14 at Pearse Stadium.

Afterwards, Leitrim manager Shane Ward complained that Galway were “very negative”. And in other news, the pot called the kettle black.

True, Galway lacked a cutting-edge up front, and they relied heavily on Leitrim fouls for their scores. But the way Ward was talking you’d swear Leitrim approached the match as if they’d six Lionel Messi figures, who played with abandon in attack. They didn’t.

Regularly the Leitrim player count inside their own ’45 was 11, as they piled players back and tried to build attacks, slowly through the hands. Bad teams drag you down to their level. And that’s what happened with Galway here: They were better without the ball than with it.

Hopefully Galway will raise their game for Mayo’s visit – they’ll certainly have to because the reigning provincial champions, who are going for five-in-a-row of Connacht titles, are operating at a different level to what was on show at Páirc Seán MacDiarmada.

The match was probably over at half-time, as Galway, having not played well at all against the wind, made it to the break with a 1-7 to 0-6 advantage. Target-man Damien Comer bagged the crucial score; on the edge of the square, he snatched a high ball from Peadar Óg Ó Gríofa, swivelled and buried to the net before half-time.

In the second-half Galway shut up shop and outscored Leitrim by six points to two. Yes, it was as grim as it sounds. Comer had a big influence on proceedings from limited possession, and others who impressed were Cathal Sweeney at corner-back, Paul Conroy at midfield, Seán Denvir at wing-back, and goalkeeper Brian O’Donoghue; and the likes of Micheál Lundy and Gary Sice worked hard.

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