Galway get the breaks but show lots of bottle in denying Donegal

Inside Track with John McIntyre

IT was almost a carbon copy of the previous Saturday night in Tralee – Galway footballers were again down to 14-men, hanging on for dear life and the opposition laying siege to their posts. This time the Tribesmen were on the rack in Letterkenny and in those nerve-wracking final few minutes, Donegal had several chances to force a draw.

Galway had been unlucky losers against Kerry, but the breaks definitely went their way in the third round of league action last Sunday. Michael Murphy had a point rightly disallowed for a square ball – how many times have we seen those type of scores given? – before Ciaran Thompson and Murphy spurned chances from close-in frees.

Murphy’s miss, in particular, will haunt the Donegal talisman even allowing for the swirling wind. It was edge of the stuff, especially if you had punted on Galway at the generous odds of 7/4, and though the Padraic Joyce led-management will be delighted with the win, this wasn’t a flawless performance.

In the opening quarter, Galway were exposed down the right flank of their defence, leading to several goal chances for Donegal, while both their ‘keepers Conor Gleeson, who was black-carded, and Ronan Ó Beolain, who was booked, were guilty of reckless sliding challenges. The fact that Galway again finished with a numerical disadvantage after Michael Daly’s late dismissal won’t have impressed the management either.

Gleeson’s lunge at Jamie Brennan in the 18th minute should have led to just a ten-minute spell in the sin-bin for the Milltown clubman, but significantly Joyce didn’t bring him back on. Was that the manager’s way of letting his first-choice goalkeeper know his rash intervention was unacceptable?

Ó Beolain virtually did the same thing late in the match, but he ‘escaped’ with a yellow card as Donegal desperately tried to pull a result out of the fire. That was an unlikely scenario for the home team after they had forged into a seven-point lead by the 43rd minute. Ciaran Thompson had just sent a cracker to the roof of the Galway net to compliment Murphy’s penalty effort in the opening half.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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