î Flatharta's Galway reign gets off to a winning start

Galway 2-9Sligo 1-10

FRANK FARRAGHER

The Epiphany is barely over and the decorations are just about boxed but already the first tentative steps of the new footballing season have been taken.

Last Sunday’s Enniscrone setting could hardly have any been further removed – both physically and spiritually – from the citadel of fire that is Croke Park on September’s third Sunday.

Snow tracks ran like bulging veins through the distant Ox mountains and a thin wind blew out to sea through the unsheltered field where Tomás Ó Flatharta and Kevin Walsh primed their charges for the start of a new season.

On a day when a lot of games towards the northern half of the country bit the dust due to frozen surfaces, the salty air probably saved this one while the local Enniscrone/Kilglass club also pulled out all the stops to ensure the tie went ahead.

It’s not like the old days in Gaelic football when January – even for county players – was a time to measure the girth expansion rate of the festive season, before a corrective programme of action would be put in place.

Last Sunday on the fringe of Killala Bay, there was scarcely a sliver of spare fat to be seen . . . today’s footballers are a far more serious breed of athlete.

There wasn’t a Joyce or Meehan putting a cog to grass on Sunday, and about a half score of other Galway potential regulars weren’t in action, but those who ‘got the start’ gave it their best shot.

Galway and Sligo are in very different places in the football world these times. Sligo don’t ‘bend the knee’ any more to the upper classes while Ó Flatharta’s side are desperately striving to be competitive against the middle to higher order teams.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.