Galway crash back to earth

Dara Bradley

SO much for Sligo and Leitrim being the starter before the main meal, a ‘glamour’ Connacht senior football final between Galway and Mayo. So much for the bookies never getting it wrong.

Galway’s incredible record of never having lost at home to Sligo in over 100 years of the Connacht championship came to an abrupt end on Saturday evening as the visitors booked their place in the provincial final with a brilliant comeback, masterminded by manager Kevin Walsh, as the hosts’ challenge withered away in the second half.

Odds of 5/1 for an away win, the large contingent of travelling support were laughing all the way to the bank back in the Yeats County. The pre-match hype that Galway would prove too strong for their rivals, was just that: wishy washy hype.

Leading by nine points to five at the interval – it could have been more had they been more clinical in front of the posts – Galway were in a fairly comfortable position.

Sligo hadn’t played well, apart from a three points scoring burst in just four minutes of the second quarter, and perhaps Galway felt the visitors weren’t up to much.

But Sligo had other ideas. When push came to shove in the second half, Galway sat back and waited for something to happen, nobody standing up to grab the game by the scruff of the neck; Sligo had the gumption to make something happen.

Man-of-the-match, Adrian Marren, who finished the day with 2-6, wreaked havoc in the Galway rearguard, although you couldn’t but lament the naivety of leaving the full-forward and corner-forward David Kelly isolated inside. Whereas Sligo crowded out their defence, suffocating Galway’s feared attack and cutting out the supply lines of possession, the home side were perhaps a bit ‘green’ for not deploying a wing forward to drop back to act as insurance for the last line of defence that was under serious pressure.

Tactics aside, many of the Galway players just didn’t perform, didn’t win their individual duels, particularly after the break. By the time Galway ended a barren spell of 21 minutes without a score in the middle chunk of the game, Sligo had drawn level, all the momentum was with them and then they stunned the maroon and white when Marren converted a penalty.

At 1-10 to 0-10, the tide had turned. Galway rallied but a second goal from Marren with a little under five minutes to go killed off any resistance and dumped the Tribesmen into the qualifiers.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.