Galway have something to build on despite heavy loss to champs

Inside Track with John McIntyre

ANYONE who is antagonistic towards the Galway footballers and the team management in the wake of their heavy All-Ireland semi-final defeat to the four-in-a-row chasing Dublin at Croke Park last Saturday evening clearly doesn’t see the bigger picture.

Of course, there is disappointment around the county that Galway fell so short of halting the Dublin juggernaut and only a late ‘soccer-style’ goal from Shane Walsh prevented them from shipping a dozen-points defeat, but the reality is that the Tribesmen were coming up against the greatest football team since the dominant Kerry era of the late seventies and early eighties.

Galway were rank outsiders but they gave it a go and were unlucky to trail by two points at the interval after Eamonn Brannigan spurned a penalty chance – it was surprising that Walsh didn’t take the kick – and the team’s attack proved guilty of some wild shooting. They needed to nail almost everything to have any hope of toppling the champions.

That penalty opportunity had come less than three minutes after Damien Comer had superbly fisted a Ciaran Duggan delivery to the net as Stephen Cluxton made a rare error of judgement in dashing off his line. A second Galway goal would surely have shaken the Dubs and, perhaps, altered the semi-final’s narrative.

The lively Ian Burke and Walsh picked off some fine points in that opening half as Galway displayed a lot more dash than in their forgettable defeat to Monaghan the previous weekend. Unfortunately, the concession of a Con O’Callaghan goal in the 27th minute – Seán Andy Ó Ceallaigh was unlucky not to prevent the ball going over the line – proved an ominous sign of what was to come.

O’Callaghan, who had his best game of the championship, Paul Mannion and Ciarán Kilkenny were constant thorns in Galway’s side and though the hard-working Tom Flynn and substitute Michael Daly picked off rousing points in the third quarter, Dublin were starting to stretch their legs in pulling clear.

Though a Shane Walsh free cut the deficit to five points in the 54th minute, Dublin really began to bore holes in the Galway rearguard as their battalion of reserves also gave them fresh impetus, with three of them, the impressive Cormac Costello, Kevin McManamon and Paul Flynn, contributing six points in total.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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