Galway rise to challenge
A first championship outing at Croke Park in five years awaits the Galway footballers against Cork next Saturday (5pm) following their shock victory over Armagh in round three of the All-Ireland qualifiers at Pearse Stadium at the weekend.
In truth, nobody saw this one coming. A team who had been hammered out the gate by biggest rivals Mayo nine weeks earlier, before struggling to overcome the limited challenges posed by Tipperary and Waterford on home soil, was simply expected to fold and exit the championship meekly against the northern raiders last Saturday.
But the Tribesmen never read the script. They packed extra bodies into the defence, closed down opponents in a manner which was totally alien to their May 19 capitulation, won out midfield, and punished their opponents with a string of well-taken scores in the sparkling sunshine.
Team manager Alan Mulholland made four changes to his side for this fixture and was forced into a fifth when defender Keith Kelly picked up an injury in the warm-up, making way for Sean Denvir.
The changes paid off, brilliantly, with Tom Flynn putting in a powerful 70 minutes alongside Paul Conroy at midfield; Micheal Martin firing over three excellent points; and Johnny Duane revelling in a sweeper role in front of Armagh danger man Jamie Clarke, who never got into this game.
A beaming Mulholland admitted that the Tribesmen had learned some harsh lessons from their uninspiring displays against Tipp and Waterford, while he felt Armagh were vulnerable after huge wins over Wicklow and Leitrim, in which they had scored 10 goals, in their two qualifiers.
“The frustrating thing is that we had a feeling all along that a performance like that was in us and after the Mayo game, the Tipperary game, and the Waterford game, we seemed to be getting more and more stick with every game we played. We thought that was in us and we showed it today. It was a fantastic team performance from everybody,” said the Galway manager.
Thanks to his day job in the family bookmakers shop, he was well aware that Galway were the highest priced team to win in all of the third round qualifiers at the weekend. But he felt that being written off before the ball was thrown in only provided added incentive to his young players.
They bought into his defensive strategy, with the likes of Conor Doherty and Martin putting in an extraordinary amount of energy to track back and help their defence in the extremely hot conditions on a regular basis. Once Danny Cummins fisted home the game’s only goal on 24 minutes, they were always in the driving seat.
For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.