Salthill soul-searching pays off after early title race blow

EVERY successful team encounters a turning point in the season. The sh*t-or-bust moment arrived quite early for Salthill/Knocknacarra.

In keeping with their tradition of slow starts to championship campaigns, the city club faced a fork in the road in May when they lost 1-8 to 2-7 to Milltown.

Captain Conor Halloran, from Knocknacarra, remembers the frank team meeting that followed the defeat.

The prospect of losing the next match, against Leitir Mór, and being plunged into relegation, sharpened the minds.

“You have to leave your feelings at the door when these team meetings are going on. It’s completely all honesty,” he says.

“We all had to sit down and reassess where we were and what we really wanted from this year. We all had to sit down and said ‘look lads, there’s no point wasting all of our time here’. So we really had to decide, write down our goals for the year and say ‘look, what do we have to do to get there?’

“Everyone has to take a real hard look at themselves and say, ‘well we’ve been training a lot, and very hard for that first-round game but didn’t turn up – what are we willing to do now to push on?”

The soul searching worked. Salthill duly defeated Leitir Mór and haven’t looked back since, toppling Caltra, Caherlistrane and Cortoon on the way to their third final in five years.

“Ever since that first loss to Milltown, we’ve been rising steadily. With each game we’ve improved significantly, and we’re hoping that we’re going to peak at the right time now.”

They’ll certainly need to be at their best to topple the champions, Corofin, who haven’t been beaten in championship football in Galway in four seasons.

Halloran, an accounts manager with city-based Blue Tree Systems, knows only too well that the North Galway kingpins have the ability to rout opponents who are not operating at full tilt.

He was a member of the successful 2012 Salthill team who won the club’s third ever Frank Fox cup with victory over Tuam Stars. But he’s suffered bad days, too.

Mention 2013 – the last occasion Salthill and Corofin met in a senior final – and Halloran smiles wryly. “I don’t have such great memories of that one!”

Salthill were hammered by 12 points in Tuam Stadium, in an encounter that was all but over after 18 minutes.

“Unfortunately for us, we didn’t turn up on the day. They had a good margin of victory over us. They really blitzed us from the word go. We were left a bit shell-shocked. It wasn’t a great start to any county final and we were chasing the game,” he recalls.  Not that he lays awake worrying about it. Halloran and Salthill has moved on.

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