Galway’s flagship GAA teams must become more reliable

Inside Track with John McIntyre

AFTER four rounds of the National Football League and three series of matches in its hurling counterpart, you’d imagine that some sort of pattern might be emerging to help get a handle on the championship prospects of the county’s two flagship GAA teams. Instead, we are probably more in the dark now than at the end of January.

Inconsistency has tended to blight the displays of the Galway footballers and hurlers and, from one game to the next, you can’t really be certain what either team are going to produce. Even within the same match, as was the case in both Pearse Stadium and Nowlan Park last Sunday, the men in maroon can be frustratingly erratic.

Take the footballers first. After a rousing away victory over Derry the previous weekend, Galway were strong favourites to fend off the challenge of a Meath team which had imploded badly against Cavan seven days earlier. Kevin Walsh’s charges appeared to be on an upward curve only to unfathomably serve up a shocking first half display against the Royals.

They trailed by 1-0 to 0-2 at the interval after failing to come out of the starting blocks. It was the same team which had lined out against Derry, but they couldn’t get motoring at all. Unforced errors, poor decision making and a lack of intensity left them in a big hole after the opening 35 minutes, leaving puzzled supporters entitled to ask: where did that come from?

To Galway’s credit, they were a transformed outfit on the resumption. Paul Conroy opened up his shoulders around midfield and Shane Walsh began to show signs of returning to his best form. All over the field, the home team picked up the tempo to then outscore Meath by 13 points to one in a quite staggering turnaround. Gary O’Donnell, Tom Flynn, Eddie Hoare and Conroy also landed some great scores as they surged into a 0-15 to 1-9 lead down the home stretch.

But there was a sting in the tail. With Galway on the brink of completing a stirring comeback from a nine point deficit and Meath in disarray, the game looked to be over only for the Tribesmen to fail to close the deal. Somehow, the visitors managed to regroup and completely against the grain in the context of what happened in the rest of the half, they managed to salvage a draw with late points from Graham Reilly, Eamon Wallace and Cian O’Brien.

Granted, if you had told the Galway camp at half time they would end up sharing the soils, they’d probably have bitten your hand off for it, but that scenario ultimately must have left them somewhat deflated. They had risen from the dead; had Meath on the ropes; only to blink in sight of the winning post. Still, Galway are lying second in the league table and remain strongly in contention for promotion.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.