United maintain promotion push with latest home win

Galway United 2

Longford Town 0

GALWAY United marked the club’s competitive 1,600th game in domestic competition in style on Monday afternoon as second-half goals from David Hurley and Max Hemmings sealed a win that secured the club’s best-ever start to a season.

A haul of 29 points from 12 games betters the 28-points tally that would have been secured from the eight wins and four draws form the 1985/86 season if the system of 3 points for a win was in place.

That campaign of almost 40 years ago remains United’s most impressive – they opened the season with a 16-game unbeaten run, before their title challenge was derailed by three successive defeats. They finished the season with three wins in that 22-game season to finish second in the table, two points behind Shamrock Rovers.

What make it more impressive is that run was achieved in the Premier Division, and a return to the top-flight looks a very real possibility by the end of this year if John Caulfield’s side can maintain this kind of form.

It was a very different win to the one achieved against Treaty United three days earlier: in that game, United dominated almost from first whistle to last, while in Eamonn Deacy Park on Monday, the Tribesmen were arguably second-best in an intense first-half, before taking control of the game in the second-half.

“I thought we started the game well. Alex [Murphy] had a header in the first two or three minutes that went close, then we had a goal disallowed at the end of the half.

“In fairness to Longford though, they are a very good team, they have very good players. They took over the game there in the first-half, and we were a little bit in bother, we couldn’t get pressure on the ball, but we sorted a few things out at half time,” was Caulfield’s assessment of that opening 45 minutes.

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

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