Footballers get a hiding!

Mayo 2-14 Galway 1-10

Frank Farragherat McHale Park

KIPLING’S famous couplet about treating the impostors of triumph and disaster just the same, might be as close as the Galway footballing family get to consolation this week after a rather disturbing early season expedition into enemy territory.

The January hiding places disappear when the ball is thrown in for the first round of the National League and under the shadow of a magnificent new stand at McHale Park on Sunday, the home side dished out a fair measure of humiliation to their great rivals down south of the border.

In the end, Mayo won by seven but they wouldn’t have been flattered if the winning margin had been double that, such was their superiority in almost every line across the pitch — sadly from a Galway point of view, this encounter was simply a no-contest right from the early minutes.

Galway started without the Corofin contingent as well as being without Michael Meehan and Padraic Joyce. After the team was announced on Thursday night, there were genuine fears – even amongst the most faithful of the maroon fraternity – that we might struggle in at least a half dozen places.

It turned out much worse. In the three main lines across the pitch — half backs, midfield and half forwards — Mayo enjoyed total control, and especially along the flanks, where Peadar Gardiner, Kevin McLoughlin, Trevor Mortimer and Andy Moran fairly shredded the Galway defence.

By half-time, when Mayo led by 0-11 to 0-5 — and were practically out the gap — three of their defenders had accounted for four points of that total, as they sallied upfield often untracked. Things might have been slightly better for Galway at the break had Nicky Joyce kept his 34th minute shot a couple of feet lower in a one to one with Mayo keeper David Clarke, after being set up by a clever Danny Cummins flick.

A rout of Dunkirk dimensions looked on the cards early in the second half when incisive and cohesive Mayo attacks ended with Enda Varley and Trevor Mortimer netting from close range — at 2-13 to 0-6 and 24 minutes still to go, Galway fans in the 6,000 crowd, were wondering where it was all going to end.

Shortly after, Trevor Mortimer got a straight red card for a high challenge on Donal O’Neill — a censure possibly a tad severe — but that seemed to stop the Mayo flow and Galway saved some face with a well taken Michael Meehan goal in the 51st minute.

Meehan, troubled by a hamstring injury, came on at half-time and whenever he got near the ball in the scoring zone, there was a sense of real menace for the Mayo backs — in the greater scale of things though, Galway were never within an ass’s roar of staging a comeback.

Galway brought on Barry Cullinane in the second half in an effort to cope with the dominance of Mayo’s Tom Parsons and Ronan McGarrity but Joe Kernan faces one tough task in coming up with a midfield pair to gain something close to possession parity between the two 45s. Tactically, a ‘Plan B’ may have to be drawn up with more bodies packing in around this area.

For more, read page 55 of this week's Connacht Tribune.