Midfield problems highlighted again in loss to Armagh

Armagh 0-21
Galway 1-12

FRANCIS FARRAGHER AT THE GAELIC GROUNDS

IT was a bit like Auroras Encore’s success in last Saturday’s Grand National — there was only going to be one winner from this final series game in Division 2 of the football league last Sunday and that was the side with the spring in their gallop and the motivation for victory.

Armagh had league survival very much on their minds in front of 4,000 feisty home fans at the Athletic Grounds and apart from one shortlived Galway power surge, early in the second half, the home side were, by a good distance, the better team.

Galway had Division 2 league survival secured before a ball was kicked in this tie, and with Westmeath fielding virtually a second string squad against Derry by the banks of the Foyle, any promotion prospects for Alan Mulholland’s side had very much slipped into the fantasy category.

For all that, the handful of Galway supporters who headed North on a quite benign day of Spring weather, hoped that the county could at last string together two back to back successes and just cast out a little lifeline of hope for the early Summer clash with Mayo.

It is no secret though that Galway are struggling in the midfield sector and when Fionntáin Ó Curraoin was ruled out, and quite rightly so too, after his extra-time exertions with the county’s under-21s the evening before, the options were limited between the two 45s.

With Niall Coleman also on the injured list, Galway had to transfer wing back Gary O’Donnell into a makeshift midfield partnership with Anthony Griffin and they were quite simply no match for the high fielding Armagh duo of James Lavery and Stephen Harold, the latter scoring three points from play into the bargain.

Galway’s only midfield thread of possession through the first half came from a series of frees that Fermanagh referee Martin Higgins called against Lavery in what seemed a bit like a teacher taking a dislike to a noisy pupil at the back of the class.

To complete the aerial diamond of dominance for Armagh, centre back Kieran Toner never gave Paul Conroy an inch of space while centre forward Charlie Vernon, was also quite majestic in the air, as Galway, for most of the match, had to survive on crumbs of possession from broken play.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.