Patience needed after Galway hit modern-day low

EVEN the county’s football old timers are struggling to remember a period when things were this bad. It’s been one disappointing championship defeat after another, but Galway’s current miserable fortunes probably hit a modern-day low when crashing out of the championship to Ulster minnows Antrim at Casement Park last Saturday.

Little did we think that when Galway last won the All-Ireland title back in 2001, that the county was facing into a decade of regular humiliation by counties who, in a traditional sense at least, wouldn’t have been fit to lace the boots of Sean Purcell and Frank Stockwell. Those home qualifier losses to Westmeath and Wexford underlined how far Galway have fallen so quickly, but the Casement Park result was a shocker altogether.

True, Antrim were always going to prove obdurate opponents on home soil and they did frighten the lives out of Kerry in the qualifiers a few years ago, but there was nothing in the team’s recent formbook to suggest that the Division Three National League outfit had the capacity to topple Galway. Liam Bradley’s men are physically strong, but they had been somewhat fortunate to survive their previous qualifier clash against London.

Naturally, Galway’s confidence had been shaken after their tame Connacht semi-final exit to Sligo at Pearse Stadium, but Alan Mulholland and his mentors had carried out some significant surgery on the side ahead of the visit to Belfast. There were new defensive roles for the likes of Johnny Duane and Gary O’Donnell, Tom Fahy was called up at wing back, the fit-again Fintan O Curraoin was named at midfield, Sean Armstrong was moved to the forty while there was a starting role for Michael Meehan.

On that basis alone, nobody could accuse the Galway management of not being proactive in trying to engineer an improvement in performance through changes and switches but, unfortunately, it made no difference. Frankly, this is a group of players whose confidence has been shot by a string of poor championship results and the lack of belief running though the team when the game was there to be won in Casement Park graphically underlined that situation again.

Psychological, Galway are in a desperate place. Losing any knout-out match by a point is the worst emotion of all, but the men in maroon have now suffered this agony on four consecutive occasions with the narrow defeat to Antrim preceded by solitary one point reversals against Donegal, Wexford and Meath 12 months ago. Those series of results can play havoc with players’ minds and when last Saturday’s game was in the balance going down the home stretch, it was always likely that Galway would buckle.

Once more, they couldn’t cope – or more precisely work their way around – with an opposition who operated the in vogue blanket defensive system. Antrim withdrew attacker Mark Sweeney as an extra defender and this tactic clogged up Galway’s forward avenues to such an extent that the visitors could only manage their first point from play, a thumping effort from Paul Conroy, until injury time in the opening-half. To make matters worse, they were also playing with the wind.

The alarm bells were already ringing after Galway’s wretched first-half performance. There was little penetration in their forward movement and their lack of directness meant the crowded Antrim rearguard was rarely stretched. Too often, Galway were operating laterally and their slow build ups was only adding to the sense of frustration of the hardy band of the team’s supporters who had made the long journey North. 

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.