Walsh gets off to a flyer with Galway

GALWAY 0-14

SLIGO 0-5

THE tourist business on the idyllic Atlantic outpost of Enniscrone is, to put it mildly, sparse on the first weekend of January but last Sunday around 500 hardy GAA souls provided something of an unseasonal mirage near the edge of Killala Bay as they travelled to view this first round Connacht FBD league tie.

Two years ago in the corresponding fixture Galway bit the dust, but this time round, with Kevin Walsh having switched the reins, there was never any real prospect of a repeat home success.

Inter-county matches at this time of year are something of a lottery with not a manager across the country in a position to call on even 50% of their frontline personnel – one of the conclusions to be drawn from this match is that the layers of back-up talent do run a bit deeper in Galway than in Sligo.

Quigabar Park in the parish of Kilglass is now earmarked as the venue for the biennial expedition of Galway to Sligo’s shores in January, and while the pitch was quite understandably a bit on the sticky and heavy side, it was very playable.

It will be interesting to note how many of the Galway team who started on Sunday will make the first fifteen against Meath in less than four weeks time, but those handed the maroon shirts at Enniscrone tore into their task with a refreshing level of enthusiasm and workrate.

Busy was probably the most apt way of describing Kevin Walsh’s competitive debut as Galway manager with a weak enough looking Sligo side unable to secure any consistent supply lines of possession.

Maybe if Sligo had played with the first half gale and put four or five early points on the board, this match would have been a tad more competitive, but when wind assisted Galway went in at the interval leading by 0-9 to 0-2, the prospects for a home comeback looked remote.

Necessity dictated that a tranche of ‘new’ players got a run on Sunday with Barna’s Paddy Naughton, Killanin’s David Walsh and Niall Walsh, Corofin’s Liam Silke and Ian Burke plus Oughterard’s Enda Tierney, all showing plenty of readiness for the action.

The Galway defensive set-up was rarely troubled by a harmless enough looking Sligo attack but young midfielder Enda Tierney got onto a lot of first half ball, and was quite prominent in attacking the kick-outs.

Full report in this week’s Connacht Tribune.