Galway men turn the screw in thrashing of sorry Exiles
Galway 5-21
London 0-9
JOHN FALLON IN RUISLIP
GALWAY’S well-documented injury crisis may have seen them flirt with relegation during the league, but the upside of a casualty list is that managements have the chance to blood new talent and experiment out of necessity with other players.
Pádraic Joyce and his management team seem to have made the most of that crisis and as they start to knuckle down for the rapid-fire list of championship games on the horizon, they probably have more options now that at any point in their reign.
Gelling all that together — presuming the injury list clears up in the coming weeks — will be the task but one of the things to emerge from Saturday’s facile win over London at McGovern Park in Ruislip is that there is plenty of talent coming through and developing.
Of course, the real tests will come further down the line but, as Joyce said afterwards, they can only beat what’s in front of them and there was a clinical edge to the way they handled the task as the windy north-west London venue in front of a large travelling support who were bolstered by Galwegians living in the English capital and surrounding areas.
The margin of victory might lead to calls to question the value of this fixture but, for once, what happens on the field, like the New York game, is not the most important aspect of this encounter. The links with the diaspora, the chance for them to see the players they follow throughout the year from afar, the opportunities for families home and abroad to unite, the opportunity for players to spend time each with other on a trip, trump anything on the field.
Pictured: Galway's Cathal Sweeney scoring their opening goal despite the best efforts of London's Stephen Dornan during Saturday's Connacht Senior Football quarter-final rout in Rusilip.