Tribesmen show what they are made of in turning the tables on Clare

THE Galway senior hurlers answered the extraordinary personal criticisms flung their way by former manager Ger Loughnane in the best possible fashion on Sunday in Thurles, reigniting their championship ambitions with a comprehensive quarter final victory over league winners Clare.

The Galway followers in the crowd of 31,690 understood the significance of this much-needed win over their near neighbours, who had won all of the important duels between the counties in recent times, swarming onto the Semple Stadium turf to acclaim their heroes after a contest in which goals in either half from Conor Cooney and Joe Canning proved decisive.

The Munster champions Tipperary await them once more in the last four after Waterford’s facile victory over Wexford in the day’s other quarter final, setting up a repeat of the 2015 pairings. More importantly, Galway are now in the process of establishing themselves as a consistent force in the championship.

To put this victory into context, Clare’s irrepressible manager Davy Fitzgerald, who was a welcome sight prowling the sidelines with his usual propensity for the over-dramatic after his recent health scare, had faced Galway in six previous quarter finals as either a player or manager and had never lost.

Galway had suffered enough down the years at the hands of the Sixmilebridge clubman, and they were in no mood to lie down on this occasion. Whether or not they had pinned Loughnane’s incendiary comments to the dressing room wall, Fitzgerald was evidently far from impressed with his former manager’s input.

“How can you be a gutless team or a bad team if you’re going to two All-Ireland finals and winning a Leinster title?” he stated afterwards. “You’re not. So they had plenty of motivation to play well today and they did fair play to them.”

All over the pitch there was a hunger and drive to the men in maroon’s play that somehow appeared to have faded away in the second half of the Leinster final, as they kept Clare at arm’s length in a tense second half to became the first Galway side in over twenty years to reach a semi-final after losing the previous year’s All-Ireland final.

Their manager Micheál Donoghue had also been on the end of Loughnane’s outburst regarding his supposed lack of passion on the sideline, but the Clarinbridge native epitomised his side’s drive and determination to get the job done when involved in a feisty confrontation with Fitzgerald early in the second half.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.