Tribesmen left punch drunk by hard hits from the Dubs

UTTERLY shell-shocked. Male or female, young or old, player, supporter or media. It didn’t matter what capacity you watched or listened to the action at Parnell Park on Saturday evening. By the end of it, we all felt the same.

Galway’s championship campaign had come to a shuddering halt at the end of an absorbing Leinster hurling championship clash leaving us all to speculate what to do with ourselves for the rest of the summer.

This was, to most, an inconceivable turn of events. The odds of Galway dropping from first to fourth place in the Leinster round-robin table in less than two hours were so minute and yet when Cathal McAllister’s final whistle sounded and fans refreshed their Twitter feeds frantically in the hope that TJ Reid had popped over a late winner for Kilkenny at Innovate Wexford Park, our worst fears were realised.

More than two hours before the off, supporters gathered outside the gates to Parnell Park, and watching the stand and terrace pack full of maroon and white as soon as the turnstiles were opened was a sight to behold.

The supporters didn’t let the players down and neither did the players fail them. The Tribesmen gave everything against a Dublin side who played the game of their lives. In the end, Chris Crummey’s goal on the stroke of 70 minutes proved a mountain too steep to overcome.

From early on, it became clear that Galway couldn’t rely on events in the sunny south east. 13 times in all Wexford and Kilkenny were level and, perhaps, the result was just on that evidence.

18 times Galway and Dublin were deadlocked. Oh if only sport was just. At the end of 70 plus minutes, four-points separated them and it’s only then that the score matters.

Mattie Kenny and his troops deserve huge credit and the night quite rightly, belonged to them. Galway didn’t lose this game, the Dubs won it.

They were asked serious questions, most notably when Joe Canning drove over the leading score with his first touch since being introduced to complete Galway’s fightback from Dublin’s second goal.

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

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