Ruthless Killanin put Sligo football champs to the sword

Calry/St Joseph’s 0-6

IN the modern game of Gaelic football, everyone is a defender. Not necessarily in the ‘park the bus’ sense but even the teams that play open and expansive football, have flashy forwards who defend from the front.

All the good teams are at it – they have to in order to succeed – but on Sunday, Killanin executed the high intensity, tenacious tackling and in-your-face pressure game with more purpose than most.

It paid dividends – the amount of turnovers and errors Killanin forced, as a hopeless Calry/St Joseph’s attempted to work it out of their defence, was too numerous to keep count, but it was a huge factor in this landslide victory in the Connacht intermediate semi-final.

Killanin’s nose for goal, of course, was another key reason the Galway champions romped to a 26 points win. Another explanation for such an embarrassing winning margin was the Sligo champions were pretty awful.

It’s hard to believe that Calry/St Joseph’s had won their county final by 4-9 to 0-6, and yet against Killanin they possessed as menacing an attacking threat as a dead sheep. They were truly awful, scoring just one point in the first 30 minutes – a free with the last kick of the opening half.

It was ‘game over ball burst’ just eight minutes in as Killanin led by 3-3 to no score. What happened thereafter was academic. There was no comeback – there couldn’t be – no team could absorb those early punches and bounce back.

Niall Walsh, a nippy corner-forward, played a huge role in Calry/St Joseph’s early downfall. The 23-year-old opened the scoring with a point 30 seconds in; then after a quick free from Cathal Sweeney, Niall Walsh linked up neatly with wing-back Jonathan Heaney for the first of five Killanin goals after just two minutes.

Three minutes later Cathal Sweeney – probably the game’s most influential player – put Walsh through for a goal after an error in the Sligo club’s defence; that made up for an earlier poor attempted lob of ‘keeper Aiden Devaney.

As Calry/St Joseph’s missed a couple of point scoring opportunities that would have settled them, Killanin went for the jugular. This time it was wing forward Enda Kelly who was instrumental in the three scores that effectively finished the game off.