Galway League take a hiding as visitors stroll to expected victory

Galway League 2Limerick League 5

Mike Rafferty

IT appears the Celtic Tiger attitude and mentality is still alive and well in some of our junior soccer players as a considerable number of them made themselves unavailable and, worse still, just choose not to show up for Saturday’s Oscar Traynor Cup tie in Terryland Park.

Of course, this campaign has been a disaster from the beginning to its hapless end and the omens were not sounding very good on the previous evening when manager Derek O’Loughlin did a pre-match interview on Galway Bay FM.

He mentioned the difficulty in getting players to show up and described how many were unavailable “due to Christmas parties, work and all the problems going back to the loss of the appeal from the Clare game.” In a word – excuses – and the entire episode casts a shadow on all involved with the Galway team.

However, credit must go to a number of players who got called up just hours before the match and still made themselves available – they at least displayed a bit of pride and interest, and awareness of representing their League.

Liam Hreherow and Brian Conlon were two of the younger generation who answered the call and they got a half each in a difficult baptism of fire.

While Limerick were tight in their selection as Pike Rovers and Janesboro provided eight of the starting 11, in contrast Mervue supplied four of Galway’s side, with the remaining seven players coming from six different clubs.

As to be expected against a side who were runners up in the competition last season, the hosts generally played second fiddle, but held their own for a long spell in the opening half. Indeed, it was only in additional time that the visitors broke the deadlock as two goals in a minute killed off the Galway challenge.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.