Galway ladies fall to heavy defeat in Div. Two league decider

Date Published: 16-May-2012

Mayo 4-17

Galway 2-7

JASON BYRNE at PARNELL PARK

SATURDAY’S National Ladies Football League Division 2 final between Galway and Mayo proved to be a disaster for Con Moynihan’s charges as the irrespressible Cora Staunton kicked a whopping 2-11 to send her team back to Division 1.

After enjoying a bright start in Dublin’s Parnell Park, Galway simply fell apart in the second half and went almost a half hour of play without a single score.

Deirdre Brennan raced in with just a minute on the clock to find the Mayo net and withTracey Leonard and Geraldine Conneally quickly tacking on points, Galway had a 1-2 to nil cushion.

Deirdre Doherty finally got Mayo off the mark, but the Galway reply was sol;id with Conneally and Gillian Joyce adding two more to their tally midway through the half. Martha Carter’s point was only Mayo’s second of the game after 16 minutes.

Remarkably, at this point, nobody enjoying the north Dublin sunshine had marked a score beside Staunton’s name in their match programmes, but the Carnacon ace finally got two white flags in the space of a minute after dispatching a free and a belter from play.

These points seemed to kick Mayo into gear, despite the loss of captain Claire Egan to the sin-bin for a tackle on Lisa Leonard. Tracey Leonard’s free regained Galway’s four-point lead with ten minutes to go in the first half, but little did they know their next score wouldn’t come until the last few minutes of the match.

In the meantime, Mayo came right back into the contest and had dtawn level by half time thanks to three more Staunton scores and another from Deirdre Doherty to make it 1-5 to 0-8.

On the stroke of half time, however, Galway were cruelly denied a stonewall penalty when Conneally left the Mayo full-back line for dead with her pace but after being upended by goalkeeper Aisling Tarpey, Kildare official Shaun Duane somehow ruled that there was no infringement.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.