Galway show little mercy in one-sided provincial battle

Galway 4-20

Leitrim 0-9

THE gulf between a team heading back to Division One and one marooned in Division Four was starkly illustrated at Pearse Stadium on Sunday when Galway romped to a record-breaking 23-point victory over hapless Leitrim in a one-sided Connacht Senior Football semi-final.

League football isn’t always the most reliable guide in terms of assessing a county’s championship prospects, but teams which are stuck in the basement division generally have their limitations brutally exposed when mixing it with more exalted company.

That was Leitrim’s fate in Salthill. They gave it their best shot and were only a point behind after 21 minutes, but Andy Moran’s team couldn’t sustain their effort or the levels of concentration to keep pace with a Galway team which impressively went through the gears in front of a crowd of 4,749.

By the end, the Tribesmen were running riot against their tiring opponents. Unusually, all four of their second-half goals fell to substitutes, with Patrick Kelly picking off two of them in an excellent display which should have him pushing for a place in the first 15 against Roscommon in over a fortnight’s time.

Though Galway treated the fixture with the professionalism it deserved, there was never the remotest prospect of minnows Leitrim pulling off one of the Gaelic football shocks of the century. Moran’s arrival last Autumn would have given them organisation, structure, and hope, but if you don’t have the in-depth playing resources, results like Sunday’s trimming are impossible to avoid.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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