Galway hurlers and footballers come up trumps in first round championship ties
ED Sheeran had them rocking in Pearse Stadium . . . Johnny Heaney had the Galway football fans dancing with joy in Castlebar . . . and hurling championship debutant, Brian Concannon, hit the goal trail at Tullamore.
It was one hectic weekend at GAA venues across the region but as Ed Sheeran belted out The Galway Girl in Salthill on Saturday and Sunday, the men-o-the-west pulled off two welcome victories – as the start of the All-Ireland series finally confirmed that Summer had arrived.
Galway hurlers opened up their defence of the Liam McCarthy Cup with an expected victory over Offaly in Tullamore – 5-18 to 2-15. For the footballers it was much tighter in Castlebar against Mayo, as they relied on an injury-time Johnny Heaney goal to see them through by 1-12 to 0-12.
For long periods of Sunday’s Galway-Mayo clash in MacHale Park, the prospect of a Pearse Stadium return bout looked a possibility as the sides were level five times during the second-half.
But deep into injury time, the Galway genie escaped from the bottle, in the form of one Johnny Heaney, who finished off one of the few free-flowing attacking moves of the entire match with a cracking goal.
When David Clarke’s net rattled four minutes into injury-time it sent Mayo headlong down the chute of the qualifying pit from which they escaped so dramatically last year.
The game will be remembered mainly for three incidents: Heaney’s wonder goal; the first-half sending off of Mayo wing-forward Diarmuid O’Connor; and a horrible knee injury suffered by Mayo midfielder, Tom Parsons, early in the second half.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.