Galway footballers made their own luck and now have got a big break

THERE’S a lazy narrative circulating about the Galway footballers at present. The widespread perception is that they’ve got lucky in the team’s last two championship games against Northern opposition.

Sure, they were eight points down and in dire straits against both Derry and Armagh, but it wasn’t as though either of those opponents handed Galway the ball and told them to keep it until the scoreboard was more in their favour. No, anything the Tribesmen got, they had to earn it.

That’s the thing with this group of Galway footballers – they don’t know when they are beaten. That’s a tremendous asset to have when your team has a mountain to climb. They had to get down and dirty to pull those games out of the fire.

Last Saturday evening at Breffni Park, Galway were facing down the barrel of a premature exit from the championship, but just like the Derry game they had the bottle, bravery and quality to rescue the situation.

The Padraic Joyce led management are also playing an incalculable role in keeping Galway’s All-Ireland crusade from hitting the rocks. Making substitutions at the right time and not being a hostage to sentiment or reputation. How else could Connor Gleeson and Paul Conroy not have started against Armagh.

We obviously weren’t privy to what happened in the Galway dressing room at half-time but interviewing players afterwards, there was no bloodletting or finger pointing. Sure, passions were raised but the over-riding message was that management still had faith in the team to turn things around.

And that’s what Galway did. Shane Walsh was unmarkable; Rob Finnerty continued his great summer campaign; while John Maher has an engine which Ferrari would be proud of. The rest weren’t sitting back either and when Galway get in the mood, they are an extremely difficult team to beat.

In a nutshell, the Tribesmen have made their own luck in recent outings by refusing to bow to the seemingly inevitable – and now they’ve got a break outside their control. In the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final draw on Monday morning, they avoided other heavyweights, Kerry and Donegal.

Admittedly, neither of these teams – especially Kerry – were pulling up trees at the weekend, but getting out of Killarney or Ballybofey would be more challenging than achieving the same feat in Newry. Down are mobile and improving but probably don’t have the experience to take out a team of Galway’s stature.

Shane Walsh with delighted Galway supporters after their dramatic win over Armagh in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship at Kingspan Breffni on Saturday evening.

Pictured: Photo: Ben McShane /Sportsfile.