Galway footballers get league campaign off to flyer

LAOIS 1-10

FROM modest expectations and limited enough resources, Galway footballers have managed to carve out a reasonably encouraging start to the 2016 season, building on their recent FBD Connacht FBD success, with a comprehensive first round National League win over Laois at O’Moore Park on Sunday.

While Galway won’t go shouting over the fence about this success, it was a solid first victory in what will be a very competitive Division 2 campaign, although based on this match alone, Laois will be unbackable favourites for the drop.

Galway undoubtedly got a little fillip of confidence from their FBD final success over Roscommon the previous weekend, and from start to finish in this encounter they looked fitter, sharper and better organised than a Laois side who never recovered from a disastrous start.

Despite another of our grey winter days of wind, rain and sullen skies, quite a sizeable Galway crowd made the trip to the South Midlands venue and many of them probably had to pinch themselves when they looked up at the interval scoreboard that showed their charges ahead by 2-6 to 0-1.

The game as a contest was done and dusted at that stage with, if anything, Galway set to enjoy the slight advantage of the crosswind in the second half – Laois did rally in the final quarter, but by then, their efforts had slipped into the ‘for appearances only’ category.

Through the 70 minutes, Galway moved the ball quite slickly with a lively mix of the handpass and longer punted efforts into an attack where the duo of Adrian Varley, and Damien Comer in particular, fairly tore the Laois defence to shreds.

Varley and Comer have come up through the ranks of under-age inter-county football and they gel well together where it matters most, in that scoring zone within 30 yards or so of the opposition goal – between them, they accounted for 3-3 of the Galway scoring total.

If the match could be categorised as having a turning point, then it came as early as the third minute when Laois full forward Evan O’Carroll sliced through the Galway defence far too easily before being taken down in the square.

From the resultant penalty, Donal Kingston opted for placement rather than power and his hands high shot was superbly tipped around the post by Galway keeper Thomas Dolan.

Full match report in this week's Connacht Tribune.