Galway survive the fright of their lives!

Galway 2-17

Laois      1-13 

STEPHEN GLENNON AT O’MOORE PARK

IT’S uncommon to see someone sit in an electric chair and wait around while the electrician changes the fuse on the plug. In any event, thank God the Tribesmen had the good sense to rouse themselves from that particular plight because, if they had not, this could have been one hell of a public execution.

Is this a little over dramatic? You decide. At half-time, Laois led 0-8 to 0-7 and, while they relinquished their advantage in the third quarter, they hit the front again when substitute Neil Foyle popped a pass to Tommy Fitzgerald for the opening goal on 56 minutes. By this stage, Laois were 1-10 to 0-12 to the good and worth every miniscule of that advantage.

To some degree, that score finally drove home to Galway exactly what the nature of this tie was and, roused to take action, they leaned out over the arm of the chair and pulled the lead, plug and all, from the socket. Quickly, Anthony Cunningham’s men began to search for the exit.

So, as an exultant Laois following was sitting the bums back down on the seats after Fitzgerald’s strike, Galway’s Joe Canning was taking charge of proceedings – as he had been doing on his side’s behalf all afternoon – by seizing the resulting James Skehill puck-out. Immediately, he took on the Laois cover, forcing the parry from their goalkeeper Eoin Reilly to present Davy Glennon with the opportunity to net.

Contrary to the preconceptions before throw-in, this was championship hurling . . . a far cry from the previous meetings between these two counties, when, for the most part, Galway handed out drubbings of significant proportions to the Midlanders. No, this was different.

Indeed, even when Galway tagged on a point minutes later through a Canning free, Seamus Plunkett’s men refused to simply go away. Instead, Laois centre-half back and captain Matthew Whelan landed a big free before the equally impressive Zane Keenan tallied his third point from play to cut the deficit to just one with seven minutes left to play. Galway were not out of the woods yet.

Well the Galway management and players knew it and so it was a credit to substitute Aonghus Callanan that he showed a bit of gumption to seize the game by the scruff of the neck – as Canning had done earlier – and netted the winning goal on 64 minutes.

Again, it all came from a Skehill puck-out which was broken into Callanan’s path and the Liam Mellows man put the head down and went for the black spot. Reilly did get a hurl to the subsequent shot but the sliotar took on a life of its own and wriggled over the line. Full report in this week’s Connacht Tribune.