Little time to draw breath as Galway head to Pearse Park

THE games are coming thick and fast now for Galway, in Division Two of the National Football League, and that might be no bad thing.This relatively young Galway side hasn’t much time to dwell on or wallow in the disappointment of the drawn game against Westmeath on Sunday at Tuam Stadium because they’ve an important fourth round clash to look forward to this coming weekend against Longford.  

Just enough time to reboot, and refocus. The team met collectively for the first time last night (Wednesday), since Sunday’s 0-13 to 1-10 draw, and Alan Mulholland indicated that he might delay naming the team until later in the week to give every player the opportunity to prove their fitness and to assess niggly injuries.

The manager confirmed that corner-back Joss Moore of Mountbellew/Moylough, who was taken off with hamstring trouble against Westmeath, is ruled out for the next couple of weeks.

The good news is that Conor Doherty and Gareth Bradshaw, who were sprung from the bench the last day after lengthy injury absences, pulled through without injury hiccups, and that game-time will stand to them.

Bradshaw, in particular, impressed when he was introduced – he kicked a vital score from play that nudged the Tribesmen in front again late on before Westmeath’s equalising point, which should put the Moycullen man bang in contention to start against Longford.

Michael Martin, who had off days in his two most recent starts at centre-forward, also did quite well when he came on as a substitute against Westmeath, kicking three pressure frees in the second half which were badly needed given that Michael Meehan’s usual placed ball accuracy had deserted him at times on Sunday.

Having reviewed the video tape of the Westmeath game – in which Galway surrendered a six point, 0-8 to 0-2 advantage – Mulholland was still of the same view that his side left a point behind them. “My view is the same as I said to you afterwards – we were in pole position at half-time, we allowed them back into it, they went two points up but we came back and we earned the draw,” he said on Wednesday.

Asked about the reasons for fading after half time, Mulholland said: “Teams are going to come at us at certain stages, that will happen in matches and teams will have purple patches, but we’ve got to curtail the amount of scores we concede when teams come at us and have their purple patch.”

Immediately after the game, Mulholland was bitterly disappointed and frustrated not to have secured all two league points, which looked a certainty at half-time.

“Westmeath won their first two games in the league, they were top of the table but we’ve three home games this year and we were hoping to win all three of them. Even with them being top of the division we were hoping to beat them but one point is better than no point. This game was very important to us.

“You know, we got a lot of stick after last week. Now, the attitude was much improved today, particularly in the first half. And that’s what we wanted to get out of today – to get a bit of respect back into the whole thing . . . you know we shipped a lot of stick, so we wanted to come out here and show everybody, you know, what Galway football is all about.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.