Little bits of luck not falling Kernan’s way

Date Published: 07-Jul-2010

FRANK FARRAGHER

When Joe Kernan reflects back on the 2010 season for Galway, he might be forgiven for ruefully concluding that those little bits of luck just haven’t gone his way.

Galway are a long way short of hacking it with the serious contenders for the All-Ireland title — but it’s not today or yesterday that we knew that.

Just a couple of minutes before half-time when Michael Meehan went in for a harmless enough looking tackle on a Sligo back and ended up writhing in pain, another blow had been dealt to Kernan’s side.

It was one of those incidents that nobody could do anything about, but two minutes into the second half when Gareth Bradshaw — in one moment of weakness — opted to try and backpass a sideline ball to Adrian Faherty, Kernan’s evening in Sligo was about to take a serious turn for the worse.

David Kelly said afterwards that he spotted Bradshaw looking back towards his own goal and gambled that he could intercept the kick. It was a defining moment of anticipation at Markievicz Park.

“I just gambled that he might kick it back towards his own goal and had that yard of a start on the Galway backs. You can make those runs 10 times and they might never work out, but there’s always the one time they will,” said Kelly.

Of course, it all made for painful video reflection on Tuesday evening at the Galway training session but after the match,Kernan had no intention of dwelling of Bradshaw’s misfortunes and gave full credit to Sligo for their battling qualities.

“We did improve a lot from the drawn match and I was delighted with the spirit and attitude of the side. But Sligo are a serious side and they scored some great points through the second half lwhen the pressure came on.

“They showed a lot of heart and deserve to be in the final but really from this evening on, we cannot look back. We have to focus on Wexford on Saturday and try to get a win under our belts,” said Kernan.

The mood in the Sligo camp last Saturday evening was ebullient to say the least and one could sense that Kevin Walsh — even within minutes of the final whistle — was a little worried that too many people were being carried away with the victory.

However Saturday evening was celebration time for Sligo, and a bit like Cinderalla, at least until the clock chimed for midnight everything was beautiful for the GAA family of Yeats county.

These are rich and verdant times for Sligo. League titles have been picked up over the past two years . . . they came withing inches of beating Kerry last year in the qualifiers last year . . . and now in the hay season of 2010, the championships scalps of Mayo and Galway have been claimed.