Galway minor hurlers brush aside Antrim

Goals from Jarlath Mannion and substitute Jack Grealish helped to book Galway’s place against Limerick in the All-Ireland minor semi-final thanks to a 2-20 to 0-9 win over Antrim on Sunday.

However, while the young Tribesmen had 17 points to spare over Antrim in this facile quarter-final victory at Breffni Park on Sunday, this was far from a rousing performance.

Of course, there were mitigating circumstances in that this was Mattie Murphy’s charges first competitive outing of the year – whereas Ulster champions Antrim had two games under their belt – and a trip to Cavan for a hurling match would hardly fill you with enthusiasm.

However, given the amount of possession Galway enjoyed throughout the 60 plus minutes, this should have translated into a greater ratio of scores, a point which Murphy agreed with.

“There were a lot of things there that you wouldn’t be overly impressed with. We were very slow out of the stalls. When we went four-two up, they brought it back to four-four and then we went six-four ahead.

“It took us a long time to put any kind of a gap between the teams. You would be disappointed with your six starting forwards. They didn’t sparkle like we believe they could, but that is it,” he said.

If there was one area that Murphy was content with it was his defence which aside from an indifferent opening quarter were much more commanding for the remainder of the tie. In this respect, hats off to corner back Declan Cronin who showed great maturity after giving away two early frees to submit an authoritative display thereafter.

“It would have been the first time we got our six backs to play as a unit in a competitive outing, other than on the training field. So, you would be looking at that and you would be happy enough that you could gel them into an okay unit,” noted Murphy.

Going forward, there is room for improvement. Galway’s wide count of 14 was too high while it was also worth noting that of the 41 scoring chances they created they took just over half. If they could also reduce the free count against – 12 in this case – to single digit figures, that should help their case against Limerick in the All-Ireland semi-final on August 17.