Title holders Corofin in a different class and still team to beat

COROFIN 1-13

MOUNTBELLEW /MOYLOUGH  1-7

COROFIN are fast becoming the silent assassins of Galway club football, dispatching all opponents into the losers skip without undue fuss or pretentiousness, and last Sunday it was the turn of Mountbellew/Moylough to perish at the hands of the county champions.

Some observers of the game felt that Mountbellew might be one of the few teams with the capability of troubling Corofin but they lacked both the tactical awareness up front and the firepower to ever make a real game of this.

Mountbellew-Moylough did manage to win a fair chunk of possession over the course of the hour but, with little direction to their attacking play, Corofin just gradually pulled away from them, with their pinpoint passing – both hand and foot – one of the features of the game.

Corofin normally don’t have a ‘man of the match’ in their games but neither do they tend to have one player in their fifteen who doesn’t perform with a striking level of efficiency and unselfishness – they just are a very neat footballing unit.

If they’re to be troubled in the closing stages of the Galway championship, then their opponents will have to score heavily when the chances present themselves – in this Tuam Stadium quarter-final, Mountbellew had a few openings early on but kicked wide from decent enough positions.

Too often, Mountbellew-Moylough forwards lost the ball in the tackle during the first half when they had the wind at their backs playing into the Cloonthue goal, while at the other end Corofin picked off six points, although they did have their share of wides too.

Martin Farragher (2), Michael Farragher, Gary Sice, Michael Lundy and Justin Burke hit the target for Corofin with Barry McHugh, from two frees, replying for Mountbellew, but just as the half drew to a close, Corofin delivered the killer blow.

The score typified the Corofin style of football with centre forward Michael Farragher, at the start and the end, of a flowing move involving three other players.

No Mountbellew hand got near the ball with Gary Sice, Justin Burke and Gary Delaney combining seamlessly before Farragher finished to the net from close range.

Half an hour earlier, Mountbellew were very lucky not to concede an early goal, when Brian Donnellan saved brilliantly from Justin Burke after another defence splitting Corofin attack.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.