Galway fail to do themselves justice in disappointing quarter–final loss to Kerry
Dara BradleyCITY TRIBUNE
GALWAY’S dreadful record against the Kingdom continued last weekend as Kerry easily brushed aside the challenge of the Westerners to earn a semi-final spot in the All-Ireland senior football championship.
The Tribesmen hadn’t beaten the Munster kingpins in Summer in the previous six times of asking since 1965 and they never really threatened to end that bad run during their seventh attempt at Croke Park on Sunday.
Once Kieran Donaghy struck for the game’s only goal after 13 minutes, there was an air of inevitability about the result. That left it 1-4 to 0-2 in Kerry’s favour, and though they only shifted between second and third gear for the duration of the remaining 60-plus minutes or so, Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s men had stretched that advantage to eight points at the finish.
Unlike the drama that came afterwards, in the drawn quarter-final between Mayo and Roscommon, which was a real contest that could have gone either way and went right down to the wire, all four sets of supporters and neutrals in the crowd of 65,000 wanted this curtain-raiser to end long before the final whistle.
Though they only played in patches, the Munster champions had enough quality in key positions to cover the six-points bookies’ spread, and finish on the right side of the 1-18 to 0-13 score line.
Galway couldn’t be accused of giving up, in fairness, but the goal by Tralee’s ‘Star’ completely sucked the belief out of them. And it’s not like they possessed a whole load of belief going into it.
On the face of it, the demolition of Donegal the previous week in the qualifiers should have given them an injection of confidence but it just wasn’t carried forward to GAA headquarters.
Instead of bursting out of the traps and trying to rattle Kerry early on, Galway was tentative and cautious and appeared to be a team trying to contain the opposition, rather than trying to take the game to them. Reacting rather than setting the agenda.
More’s the pity because the Division One league champions appeared vulnerable, and a shadow of the side that toppled the Dubs earlier this year, or put Cork to the sword in Killarney in July.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.