St. James’ footballers finish with a flourish to seal place in showdown

Date Published: {J}

St James’ 0-11

Tourmakeady 0-8

Sean Rice

IT was their first ever experience of football at provincial level, but new Galway intermediate champions St. James’ showed few signs of big day nerves in getting the better of Mayo counterparts, Tourmakeady, in this Connacht semi-final at McHale Park on Sunday.

With a final flourish, which secured three unanswered points, the Galway title holders have now set up a final battle with Strokestown of Roscommon at Tuam Stadium this weekend with the accuracy of county players, Eoin Concannon and Paul Conroy, critical to their success.

For a while in the second half, it seemed as if all St. James’ good work in the opening 30 minutes was about to bear little fruit as Tourmakeady stormed back to gain parity at the beginning of the last quarter.

But when Ronan O’Connell fired St James’ into the lead again, their confidence returned and further points by Conroy and Concannon opened up the path to victory.

Watching them perform so smoothly in the first half, you would not have predicted such a tough fight in the end. Tourmakeady, doughty fighters that they are, rallied towards the end of the half to cut their deficit of four points to a manageable two at the interval. And the game was really on.

Although the Mayo champions established an early lead when Brendan Prendergast scored the first of his four points, St James’ looked the better side. Paul Conroy and Mick Kelly won most of the midfield action and had steady support from Alan Deacy and Johnny Duane in defence and Concannon and Alan O’Donnell in the forward line.

Right down the centre they were strong. There was more breath to their game and while scoring was difficult against a tough-tackling Tourmakeady defence, it seemed only matter of time before a gap or two would open.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.