Galway United 3

Athlone Town 1

THERE are games in every season which will never live long in the memory, and this was one of them for Galway United, despite John Caulfield’s side extending both their winning run at home, and their lead at the top of the First Division.

The league title now looks a formality after United stretched 12 points clear at the top of the table thanks to this win, and Waterford’s draw with Longford Town 24 hours later, and with this Bank Holiday weekend’s double round of fixtures marking the half-way point in the season, United can begin the long goodbye to the bottom tier.

This made it nine wins on the spin at home, a run which began with the play-off semi-final win over Longford Town at the end of last season. They have now won 15 of their 16 games this season – they finished last season with 17 wins from 32 games. This is just different gravy altogether.

There is still one issue that someone at the club really needs to address and that its the antics, for want of a better word, on the bench. Caulfield has already served a one-match ban for being sent off and his assistant manager, Ollie Horgan, has served a one-match ban for five yellow cards.

Club coach Chris Collopy is now one booking away from a ban of his own after a yellow card on Friday night – and Caulfield also went into the referee’s notebook. There seems to be a clampdown from match officials throughout the league on backchat from the bench – and some of the men in black have completely lost the run of themselves when dishing out cards like they were sales reps from Hallmark.

That said, if you know how fragile these officials are, then stop giving them the excuse to flash a yellow or red at the bench, especially for petulant outbursts and rattle-throwing that we have seen at times throughout the two divisions from grown men who should know better.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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