Galway comfortably book spot in All-Ireland series

Antrim 1-14

By Kevin Egan at Pearse Stadium

If Galway fail to pick up the result they need in Parnell Park this Sunday to reach a Leinster final, people will look back at some of their big wins, including this walk in the sunshine against Antrim in Pearse Stadium, and say that the Tribesmen are just flat-track bullies.

Antrim certainly flattened the track for Galway as much as possible by producing a limp, anaemic performance that was littered with inaccuracy when they hurled with a strong breeze in the first-half, and bereft of any energy whatsoever after half-time, allowing Galway’s inside forwards to fill their boots with four more goals in the second half.

Flat track bullies would imply raising your game in order to properly fillet a weaker opponent; Galway went through the motions, and still racked up a 28-point winning margin by the end.

The lie of the land in the Leinster championship prior to Saturday’s games was such that even if Antrim travelled west with a genuine belief that they could win, there wasn’t a lot of incentive for them to take any chances in a bid to do so.

Their season was inevitably going to come down to a relegation shootout with Offaly in Tullamore, as it now has, so while James McNaughton was suspended, other leading forwards such as Sean Elliot and Keelan Molloy were also left aside, officially due to injury.

That meant that Eoghan Campbell was pulled out of his usual centre-back position to operate at centre-forward; while Declan McCloskey came into the half-back line for his first start of the year.

What played out was a pedestrian encounter where it would be difficult to glean anything meaningful for Galway, certainly when it was stacked alongside the infinitely more intense battles that took place in Kilkenny, Limerick, and Thurles on Sunday afternoon.

Antrim got the better start with two points from Joseph McLaughlin, but they quickly started building towards their first-half tally of eight wides; while a point from Niall O’Connor from inside his own 45 illustrated both the strength of the wind, and Antrim’s need to build a lead.

Pictured: Galway’s Declan McLoughlin goes past Antrim goalkeeper Ryan Elliott before firing to the net. Photo: Joe O'Shaughnessy.