Galway senior footballers one step away from All-Ireland quarter-final
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GALWAY’S Robert Finnerty produced a sensational attacking display where he finished with 1-9 from play in his side’s big win over Kildare in round one of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship last Saturday evening at Pearse Stadium.
Kildare really struggled to get to grips with Finnerty’s movement and finishing in Salthill in front of a modest crowd of 5,800.
“I started off fairly hot, got a few easy enough scores on the board fairly early which helped me settle into the game.
“It was quite comfortable from there, a lot of the hard runs that the lads were doing out the field opened up a lot for me, obviously it helps when the other lads are going really well beside you as well. Happy enough with my own performance,” Finnerty told Tribune Sport.
Galway had struggled to retain possession from their own kickouts and struggled to apply a press on Roscommon’s kickouts in the Connacht SFC final. On Saturday, there was an improvement in this area for Padraic Joyce's side.
“That was definitely something we were disappointed with after the Connacht final. I think it was probably fairly obvious there was a lot of talk around it. We weren’t really at it on our press on their kickouts. So we obviously went after that today and put a bit of work into it the last few weeks, and it paid off.
“We were very disappointed with the Connacht final, but we took a few bits from that game and worked on them. Kick outs were one thing, and also conceding goals, so we managed to improve that big time,” said Finnerty.
He was pleased with the way Galway were able to take control of the game early on against Kildare. “It was probably one of the first games this year that hasn’t really come down to the wire. We managed to finish it off early and get comfortable. The first half gave us a massive platform there.
“It’s a fresh competition and can be a bit hard to explain to people, but we know now if we win one more game we are in a quarter-final, added the Salthill-Knocknacarra clubman.