Galway Utd head to Showground looking for just a fourth league win in 35 visits to the ground

Galway United head kick-off a busy eight-day period away to Sligo Rovers tomorrow night with manager Tommy Dunne saying he has set his players a points target for those upcoming three games.

United head to the Showgrounds tomorrow night (7.45pm) looking for what would be only a fourth ever league victory in 35 visits to the ground, followed by a home game against league champions Dundalk next Tuesday (7.45pm) and a trip to the newly-opened Markets Field for a meeting with Limerick FC next Saturday (6pm).

“It will be a tough game, but they are all tough. We have a busy week ahead of us, so we trained hard this week as really, next week will be all about maintenance. We know they are a tough side, they did us in Galway earlier in the season and even though they are now where they expected to be in terms of the table, we’ll get nothing easy up there,” Dunne says.

This year’s Sligo Rovers are but the faintest of faint shadows of the side that won the league in 2012 and three FAI Cups between 2010 and 2013. They have won just two league games all season, and last weekend the protracted saga over manager Owen Heary was finally resolved when he left the club, having supposedly been relieved of first-team duties three weeks’ earlier.

Those poor results and the questions over Heary’s future would suggest a club that has but distant memories of recent happy days: only yesterday, the club released a statement from Galway native and Rovers player Alan Keane stating “there has been an incident on my behalf and I’m sincerely sorry for the unwanted headlines which let my team mates, staff and club down”.

His crime? Looking at his phone during a team meeting – a breach of discipline, yes, but it hardly warranted a statement to be released by the club, drawing even more attention to the beleaguered outfit.

United will want to capitalise on that feeling of gloom in the north-west, but to do so they will need to heed the words of captain Ryan Connolly and “be more ruthless in defence”. They could have taken a point at home to Shamrock Rovers on Friday night, only for inept defending from set-pieces to have undone them once again, and Connolly says the players need to cut out that sloppiness in defence.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.