Galway a beaten docket long before the end at Croke Park

THERE are games where the margin on the scoreboard doesn’t reflect the true gap between the sides and last Sunday’s Connacht Football Final certainly felt like one of them. With 66 minutes on the clock, Galway trailed Mayo by just two points, a kick of the ball between them, but in reality, the Tribesmen looked a beaten docket long before then. On the scale of six point defeats, this one was a whopper.

In last year’s Connacht Final in Pearse Stadium, Galway recovered from a poor first half display to come within a point of Mayo. This year, Pádraic Joyce’s side threw away a strong position at half-time, five points to the good, with a capitulation as bad as any seen from the county in recent or not so recent memory. The post-mortem will be a long and difficult one for both players and management as they must wait until next spring for the chance to put things right.

In truth, that five point cushion at half-time papered over a lot of cracks in Galway’s first half performance. By their own manager’s account, Galway only reached 30 or 40 per cent of their potential in that first period. The problem was that those levels plummeted in the second half.

For their part, James Horan said after the game that there was no panic in the Mayo dressing room at half-time and, on reflection, their contentment was justified. Mayo had the majority of possession during the first half and were it not for some awful shooting, could have been much closer, or even level, at half-time.

Even Galway’s goals came thanks to, in large parts, Mayo switching off, although Shane Walsh still deserves huge credit for his role in both. For Walsh’s goal in the 19th minute, Lee Keegan literally stood still as the Galway captain blazed past him to pick up the rebound from Paul Conroy’s shot before blasting past Rob Hennelly in goal.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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