Rehearsals in full swing for major Druid Murphy project

Date Published: 26-Apr-2012

Mayo 1-12

Galway 1-6

FRANK FARRAGHER AT McHALE PARK

ANOTHER dirge to be delivered and alas equally as doleful as the hurling lament of the previous weekend, with Galway’s footballers taking their leave from the Connacht championship in the most forlorn of circumstances at Castlebar on Sunday.

Indeed by half-time, the crowd of over 19,000 could have been forgiven for thinking that the Connacht Council had relieved them of their entrance money under false pretences, such was the dullness of the first 35 minutes with the game oscillating from the mediocre to the truly awful.

The hefty admission charges of €30 and €25 ensured that large chunks of the concrete seats were empty – do the Connacht Council have any idea at all of the times we’re living in – the stay-at-home brigade were the wise ones at the end of a dank and dreary day at McHale Park. Last Sunday, the lustre was gone from this traditional jewel in the Connacht football calendar.

Mayo do at least have the consolation of a win under their belts against their great rivals in Connacht but this week the Galway footballing family will have to reflect on one of the worst championship performances delivered in decades by a county team – in the end Tomás Ó Flatharta’s sides can be grateful that the margin of victory wasn’t at least double the final gap.

Galway have gone nowhere fast this year with no clear vision or strategy either for the present or the future and the policy of appointing two outside managers in a row in the space of two years must face its judgment day. To say that it hasn’t worked is stating the case for the prosecution very mildly – put more bluntly it has been an unmitigated disaster for the county team.

The maroon line-up for last Sunday had a full back playing at midfield, a wing back lining out in the forward line, with two midfielders playing in the centre back and full forward positions . . . it really was one awful nightmare but there was to be no wake-up call.

The competitive flame was only kept alive in the first half by the abysmal failure of the Mayo forward line to capitalise on the wealth of possession that their midfield and half backline were generating.

When Mayo trotted in at half-time trailing by 1-5 to 0-4 with goalkeeper Robert Hennelly their top scorer on two points, there was nearly a feeling that we had all been sucked into through one of Lewis Carroll’s looking glasses . . . . things were getting curiouser and curiousier.

By the time we stretched the legs at the interval, this match could quite easily have passed for a Division 3 or 4 mid-winter league tie with Galway living on scraps of possession and Mayo kicking shocking wides as well as dropping a series of frees short into Adrian Faherty’s small square.

Things were so awful that it looked as if Paul Conroy’s 29th minute goal from close range could be the deciding score of the match but for Galway – in trouble in defence, wiped out in midfield and devoid of possession in attack – the lucky streak just couldn’t last.

Mayo powered on in the second half and even if their game wasn’t built on any unshakeable buttresses of confidence, they were still a lot better at doing the basics than Galway – critically they could win ball in the air, mop up the breaks around midfield, and with that cushion of possession, the scores just had to arrive.

A lot of Galway heads will have to be scratched to recall a worse second half performance in championship football over the past 20 years. Over the course of 38 minutes, the Galway attack delivered just one score – an Eoin Concannon point that ironically should have been a goal – for most of that time, maroon hands just couldn’t get on the ball.

Galway were in desperate trouble at midfield all through where Joe Bergin and Finian Hanley could never get to grips with the Mayo sibling pairing of Seamus and Aidan O’Shea – it is desperately unfair to keep on playing Hanley, a natural full back or possibly a centre back – in a role that he clearly is not suited to, or settled with.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.