Lundy to the rescue as Mountbellew/Moylough nearly pull off shock victory

COROFIN 0-7

THE strangest of county finals that came within seconds of producing the shock of the decade in Galway club football as Corofin had to rely on a last-gasp point to hold onto their senior title.

For the neutral at Pearse Stadium on Sunday, this was mighty tough going, with more often than not, both sides having nearly all of their players behind the ball as the scoring zones were protected in much the same way as a lioness would look after her cubs.

The tie though was laced with intrigue, suspense and tactical nuances, as a well tutored Mountbellew/Moylough side prioritised the safeguarding of possession, even if that meant repeated bouts of sideways and backwards ball movement.

Corofin’s response to this tactic was also decidedly cautious. In contrast to their semi-final victory over Annaghdown, they were reluctant to ‘push up’ on their opponents, content to let them have the ball in their own half of the pitch.

The result of all this was a stalemate that regularly drifted into sheer boredom, but the sub-plot of the possibility of a monumental shock being on the cards still gripped the attention of the close-on 5,000 crowd.

Fifty-two seconds over the allotted three minutes of injury-time to be played had elapsed when, Corofin to their credit, showed enormous composure to mount a last desperate attack that resulted in captain, Micheál Lundy, punching over the levelling point.

The Mountbellew/Moylough camp might have felt that referee James Molloy could have sounded the final whistle ‘on the button’ of the three minutes but it’s within the official’s remit to allow for any slowdowns or stoppages as he sees fit during the added-on time.

It was though a case of ‘oh so close’ for Michael Donnellan’s Mountbellew/Moylough side as they put a carefully planned strategy in place to negative the Corofin threat based on two essential principles.

The first was in the retention of possession as an absolute priority with the ball never to be given away cheaply: the second was in getting all available personnel behind the ball whenever Corofin were in possession.

And yet it nearly all went pear-shaped for Mountbellew in the opening seconds of the game when a long ball from Ronan Steede found Michael Farragher all alone in a one-to-one with keeper Damien Boyle but his low shot went inches wide of the post.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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