Tribeswomen struggle to come to terms with 24-point loss to ruthless Cork

ANY defeat is tough to take but this heavy loss for Galway’s ladies footballers will be an exceptionally tough pill to swallow for players, management and supporters alike. There’s no getting away from it, this was a demolition job by one of the greatest, GAA teams we have ever seen, male or female.

What will make this defeat so difficult to come to terms with is the fact that no one saw it coming. Having blitzed Mayo by 10 points in the Connacht final and played some fantastic football in the process, and coming up against a Cork team who appeared to be struggling for form, many were quietly confident that an upset may have been on the cards.

What transpired was a Cork team rediscovering their mojo, and Galway the ones with the misfortune of coming up against them. No doubt there were questions being asked of Cork. They slipped up to both Kerry and Waterford in the Munster championship and were lucky to advance past Monaghan the last day out, but boy did they silence the critics on Saturday.

That same Mayo team that Galway blitzed in the Connacht final took to the field in Mullingar shortly after the Tribeswomen retired to their dressing room, and defeated Donegal to advance to the last four. They must now face up to this fearsome Rebelette unit and if Cork turn up in the same vein of form they did on Saturday, it’s hard to hold out any hope for them.

Seeing Mayo advance to the last four makes the pill that little bit tougher to swallow for Galway, but it does prove that they are not far off the mark, not that that is of much consolation to players or management. The reaction of devastated manager Stephen Glennon after the game spoke volumes.

“The scoreline says it all. The fact of the matter is we didn’t see it coming. The girls were flying it at training and to not translate it on to the field is very disappointing. Usually they say you get out of it what you put in to it, but today must be an aberration of some sort because the training was absolutely spot on,” he said.

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