Half-time gloom replaced by final whistle joy as footballers turn it around

WHILE there was a sense of relief etched on the face of Galway manager Kevin Walsh as he faced the microphones in the aftermath of his side’s Connacht final success, there was too a feeling of satisfaction that his side had faced into a crisis and come out on the right side of it.

He admitted that there was worry at half-time when Galway trotted in at the break three points down after playing with the wind – what mattered to him, and his team, was how they would respond to this adversity.

“We just had too many turnovers in that first half – about 12 in all between kicked passes and hand passes – and at this level you just can’t hand the ball back to the opposition. When you do that, you’re always going to be in trouble.

“With half of this match over, there were a lot of questions being asked of this team and of the management too at half-time. We knew what happened last year and we had that in mind too.

“It was a case of whether they were going to fold or whether they were they going to come out and play in the second half. The players gave that answer in the second half and got us through what was always going to be a tough match,” said Walsh.

There’s a bit of pride there too that after some very lean years in the Connacht championship, Galway have now won two out of the last three provincial titles, and the manager stressed that this was one ‘they didn’t want to leave behind’.

“There are a lot of young lads on the team, but without any shadow of doubt, the group are maturing nicely, and are facing up to the challenges put in front of them.

“We’ve had tough draws in the Connacht championship over the past three years – this is the first time in my four years that we’ve played Division 2 and Division 3 teams here in Connacht so two titles out of the three finals is not bad. We’d have preferred three but . . . . ,” said Walsh.

He readily concedes that Galway’s first half performance was ‘very poor’ but said that there was no sense of panic at half-time – just a realisation that everyone had to do better. The ‘wind factor’ though didn’t really bother them that much.

“We hadn’t played well in the first half but yet there was only three points in it. At the end of the day, that wasn’t a big deficit, and to be honest, there’s often too much made of the wind.

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