Unlucky minors blow it

UNBELIEVABLE stuff. In the history of Galway hurling hard luck stories – and, God knows, the county has endured enough of them down through the years – there have been few to match the way in which the minors blew this All-Ireland final to an immensely fortunate Kilkenny side at Croke Park on Sunday.How they managed to lose this decider will haunt the Galway boys for weeks and months to come, as they were clearly the better team and should have been out of sight before a late sucker-punch in the form of a Kilkenny goal turned this game on its head with barely two minutes to go.Just look at the statistics. The Tribesmen scored 13 times, the Cats nine. They held the Cats scoreless for 26 minutes of the second half, scoring seven points without reply at that stage, and looked to be on course for a fully deserved win.Their full-back line had been magnificent, under a huge amount of dropping balls from the Leinster champions, and yet two lapses in concentration led to two soft Kilkenny goals in the first half and left them, bizarrely, five points down at the break.They kept their composure to whittle down Kilkenny’s lead and then to surge in front coming into the closing stages. But the feeling that the Tribesmen didn’t ram their advantage home when they were on top came back to haunt them when substitute Danny Purcell came off the bench to fire home the winning goal to the delight of the Kilkenny hordes, and the shock of everyone who had followed this game from the outset.Ultimately, those ........