Galway less beautiful on the eye but getting good at winning ugly

Inside Track with John McIntyre

THERE was enough to crab about Galway’s display in Castlebar on Sunday, but the only thing that mattered when all’s said and done was the result. Set up for a fall with all the hype about them after a really progressive league campaign, the Tribesmen admirably toughed it out in getting the better of Mayo for the third year running.

Ultimately, it took an injury-time bullet from Johnny Heaney to seal Galway’s passage to the Connacht semi-final and though football purists will bemoan a shockingly defensive-orientated battle for supremacy, the bottom line is that Kevin Walsh’s squad have seriously smoothed their passage to the new Super 8s later in the campaign.

The local critics will understandably question why it took Galway so long to settle the issue. After all, Mayo were missing key players Cillian O’Connor, Brendan Harrison and Lee Keegan, had Diarmuid O’Connor rightly dismissed approaching half-time, lost Tom Parsons to a serious leg injury while the All-Ireland finalists of the past two years also spurned a series of clear-cut chances.

Galway came with the same formula which served them so well in reaching the league final. They again piled numbers behind the ball, only this time their counter-attacking wasn’t carried out with the same pace or cut and thrust. They were standing off too much at times, handing Mayo no shortage of territory and possession, particularly in the first half. A more economical opposition would have punished Galway, but the home team lacked conviction in the shooting, while the normally influential O’Shea brothers, Aidan and Seamus, looked somewhat off the pace.

Against that background, Galway obviously had the opportunity to be more adventurous but, by and large, they stuck rigidly to the system until a maze of substitutions energised the attack with increased pace and movement. In that context, Walsh and his mentors help to win this fraught affair from the sideline with the timely introductions of Ian Burke, Sean Kelly, Eamonn Brannigan and Adrian Varley.

Indeed, Varley, Burke and Kelly combined to do the spadework for Heaney’s superb matchwinner and all will be chasing promotion for the Sligo match at the start of June. Galway may have ridden their luck at times against 14-man opponents, but they were the ones who were able to conjure up that moment of magic to help maintain their current mastery over Mayo.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.