Out-of-sorts Salthill fail to deliver in crunch test

Date Published: 14-Nov-2012

St. Brigid’s (Roscommon) 0-15

Salthill-Knocknarra 0-8

FRANK FARRAGHER AT PEARSE STADIUM

AN explosive cocktail of pace and intensity from Roscommon and Connacht champions, St. Brigid’s, fairly blew Salthill-Knocknacarra out of the water in a surprisingly one sided provincial senior club semi-final at Pearse Stadium on Sunday.

It was a massively disappointing performance from the Galway champions and the truth of this showdown is that Salthill were only really competitive for two ten minute periods of this match in either half – for the remaining two thirds of the match, St. Brigid’s held a complete stranglehold on possession.

In fairness, the opening 10 minutes of the match seemed to indicate that little would separate the sides at the end of the hour, after they had equally shared six points, but from there to half-time, almost all of the match was played in the Salthill-Knocknacarra half of the pitch.

Salthill did suffer a major early loss when free scoring corner forward Seamie Crowe had to retire just six minutes into the match with a leg injury, but as the half wore on, very few balls filtered through to the home set of forwards.

St. Brigid’s played the match with an extra yard of pace and zip that Salthill just couldn’t cope with. The first half midfield dominance of the Roscommon champions wasn’t based on any spectacular exhibition of high fielding – instead they hunted like hungry wolves for all the scraps of possession between the two 45s.

Kevin McStay’s side played this match the Donegal way – all high intensity stuff, and especially so when they didn’t have possession of the ball. Time and again, they hassled and harried Salthill players in possession, often either leading to direct turnovers or else fouls on the ball by the home side.

Ten minutes into the second half, when St. Brigid’s had powered their way to a 0-11 to 0-4 lead, a defeat of quite embarrassing proportions looked to be on the cards for Salthill-Knockncarra but a measure of credit must be given to Gerry Hughes’ side for spiritedly battling back.

Three well taken points, two frees and a real neat effort from play – all supplied by their most dangerous forward, Sean Armstrong – reduced the deficit to four points and it could have been closer had Armstrong found the target with another free and a sideline ball, while Conor Healy also blasted wide from a good position.

On the day that was in it, given St. Brigids overall dominance, Salthill needed to be picking off every chance to keep them competitive – when Frankie Dolan landed a superb 45 metre free followed by a Niall Grehan effort from play (again after the home side had lost possession in defence), the bite was gone from this match with a full 10 minutes left on the clock.

Effectively, this contest was decided in the 20 minute period before half-time when the Connacht champions outscored the home side on a 5-1 tally, and that didn’t flatter them either, as they also kicked five wides from decent enough positions. By then very few in the crowd of about 1,500 people were in any doubt about the outcome.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.