Close call against St. Michael's was making of Salthill: manager Hughes

ALMOST every team that wins a county title can look back on a decisive juncture in their journey to glory and say: ‘That was the making of us’.

For the 2012 Galway senior football champions, that ‘wake-up call’ came in the second round of the championship in June when they were on the brink of a shock exit to neighbouring club and city rivals, St Michael’s.

One of the quirky flaws in the local championship is that first round winners can be drawn in the second round against the teams they beat the first time out, which was exactly what happened to Salthill who faced a side they’d hammered in round one, St Michael’s, who had emerged through the back-door with a win over Moycullen.

Salthill won the first day in May with eight points to spare but they were so superior it could have been far greater a margin. The following outing, a knockout clash a month later, was far from convincing and it’s not exaggeration to say that Gerry Hughes’ charges were extremely lucky to get out of Pearse Stadium that day with a win, by the skin of their teeth.

In hindsight it was a make or break game: It could have broken them – literally, they could and probably should have been dumped out of the title race – but instead it made them, informing their attitude for the remainder of the campaign.

What Salthill learned that day is that better players and a better brand of football doesn’t necessarily always translate into success; and what St Michael’s taught them was that a high level of work rate and intensity can allow so called weaker teams to perform in the whole, greater than the sum of their parts.

“Our first couple of games against St Michael’s we were favourites to beat them, but St Michael’s almost had us gone out of the championship on our second day of the championship. They put in a mighty performance that day, worked very hard, and we were lucky.  

“We talked about that game a lot afterwards and we said that the kind of effort St Michael’s put in that second day was what we had to get into our team. We needed to get that work rate,” said Hughes, who said that same work rate that was lacking in the scare earlier in the summer was the vital ingredient to Salthill’s success on Sunday.

“The key to winning the game today was work rate from our team. We’d be known as a good footballing team, which we are, but to match the work rate to go along with that was the key for us today. We knew Tuam would run at us all day and that they’d go for the fifty-fifty balls and we said we’d have to do that and match them in intensity and tackling and work rate. That work rate and the fact that we have some nice footballers paid off for us,” he said.

This is the Belfast native’s second year over the seniors and he believes the management team learned from the mistakes of the previous campaign when Salthill came up short against Tuam at the semi-final stage after a replay. “We were disappointed last year. It was my first year in charge. I always knew they had ability, I’ve been in the club over 15 years, and I’ve known a lot of them, seen them growing up and coming through underage and on to minor and some of them going on and playing for the county. So I knew they had ability all right, and it just came together this year with everyone pulling in the same direction.

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