Inside Track with John McIntyre

WHAT unfolded at Pearse Stadium on Sunday will have put the fear of God into all Corofin’s senior football championship rivals about what lies ahead in the years ahead. A team which was supposed to be in transition managed to regain the club’s hold on the Frank Fox Cup in impressive fashion despite coming up against the highly regarded champions.

A devastating 15-minute period in the second-half in which they scored 1-4 without reply proved the catalyst for Corofin to end a four-year title ‘famine’ with their mix of the old and new proving too strong for a Maigh Cuilinn team admittedly badly hit by the absence of injured county star Seán Kelly.

Though only two points separated the teams at the finish, Maigh Cuilinn were a little fortunate to be that close. A stoppage-time goal from Johnny Moloney, together with Dessie Conneely’s free, led to late drama around the Corofin posts, but Kevin Johnson’s team had given themselves a sufficient buffer to survive.

Overall, Sunday’s county final was a positive advertisement for Galway football. There was great intensity to the first-half exchanges, in particular, with neither team prepared to concede an inch. Some of the scoring was spectacular with Peter Cooke, Eoghan Gallagher James McLaughlin, man of the match Liam Silke, Kieran Molly, Tony Gill and Gary Sice landing some terrific points.

Already level six times, it took Molloy’s cracking score to separate the teams at the break (0-7 to 0-6), and when McLaughlin and Sice (free) exchanged points on the resumption, we anticipated that the tit-for-tat nature of the contest would continue. But Corofin had other ideas as they threw battled-hardened and honoured-ladened duo Mike Farragher, who had coached Monivea-Abbey to the intermediate glory the previous day, and Micheál Lundy into the fray.

Pictured: Corofin’s Cathal Silke has Tom Clarke of Maigh Cuilinn in hot pursuit during the Galway Senior Football Final at Pearse Stadium on Sunday. Photo: Joe O’Shaughnessy.