Galway U-21 hurlers miles off the pace

IF this is the best crop of young talent in the county and if their limitations so brutally exposed by the reigning champions and a dazzling Clare outfit in Saturday evening’s All-Ireland U-21 semi-final are to be taken at face value, Galway hurling had better brace itself for lean times ahead.

A dozen points they were adrift at the finish and it could have been more. Galway just didn’t possess the quality, team-work or the guile of the title holders who finally turned the screw in the second-half after a sloppy opening 30 minutes marred by some poor shooting.

What we saw in Thurles comes as no major surprise. Galway weren’t 5/1 outsiders for nothing, but it was the totality of the defeat which will have demoralised the few team supporters who made the journey south. A meagre tally of seven points speaks for itself.

Though Galway only trailed by 0-5 to 0-3 at the end of a fractured half-hour’s action, they had been playing with the wind while there was an air of apprehension virtually every time Clare’s fleet-footed soldiers attacked opposition territory. Creating chances was proving no problem for the Banner boys, but their shooting radar initially suffered a significant malfunction.

Clare had eight wides in the first-half and though Galway hit seven of their own, the majority of them were struck under pressure. The challengers’ route one strategy of long puck outs to a crowded landing zone also yielded little return, while too many of the Galway players were reduced to negative roles, running around trying to keep tabs on their direct opponents.

On the scoreboard, at least, Galway were hanging in there at the interval, but a far more urgent Clare took to the field for the second-half and they really cut loose in the third quarter, rattling up 1-5 to a mere point in reply. By the end, they could afford to replace three of their four starting seniors from their landmark win over Limerick the previous weekend to further underline the gulf between these neighbours.

Even the rival pre-match warm up routines would have caused a sense of foreboding among followers of the Tribesmen. Galway went down the traditional route with a bit of stretching, a bit of ball work and a bit of shooting but Clare’s was all about tackling, hand-passing under pressure and rucks for possession – in other words, recreating the dynamics of modern-day hurling. There was also a greater intensity about the way they did everything too.