Dublin 2-19

Galway 2-13

By Paul Keane at Corke Park

Top of the league, albeit jointly so with Dublin and Donegal, and just one regulation game to go. Would Padraic Joyce have taken such a scenario at the beginning of Galway’s Division 1 campaign? Probably.

Mind you, it’s no time to start losing games with Kerry coming to town this weekend and Galway’s unbeaten record, the only one in the top three divisions approaching last weekend, crumbled and turned to dust at Croke Park.

Suddenly, with the Championship just around the corner, there were questions where previously there had only been answers and emphatic statements.

The principal query, which caused Joyce palpitations on the Croke Park sideline, related to his misfiring frontline.

By half-time of this Round 6 encounter, the management had called both Rob Finnerty and Shane Walsh ashore.

Both must have felt a little sorry for themselves. Finnerty’s third start of the campaign began brightly, sniping two points in the first six minutes; and Walsh came into the encounter as the two-point king, a remarkable 15 of them already converted in just four starts.

But their flagging first-half fortunes were emblematic of a team struggling for fluency and, crucially, scores. Galway trailed by seven points at the interval, 1-10 to 0-6, and neither were back out for the second-half.

Afterwards, Joyce seemed almost affronted when a press man asked if the duo’s departures were injury-related.

“No, they were . . . they missed about 2-10 between them,” he shot back immediately.

If the first-half was the story of two forwards taken off, the second was at least a more positive tale of two forwards that came on.

Liam Ó Conghaile replaced Finnerty for his first activity of 2025, bringing to 30 the number of players Galway have used in the campaign. It wasn’t long before the An Spideal man had scored the fourth point of his senior career either.

Truth be told, there was more intrigue around Galway player number 31 of the season: Damien Comer.

It was far from his first rodeo, but the powerful Annaghdown man was also making his seasonal return when he came on after 46 minutes. While Galway ultimately lost the battle against a Dublin side that looked slicker, sharper and far hungrier, perhaps motivated too by last June’s All-Ireland quarter-final defeat, Comer did tantalise with suggestions of what he can possibly do in the war ahead.

He only came on shortly before Sean Bugler struck his, and Dublin’s, second goal to leave 10 points between the teams, but it was still essentially the Comer show for the last 25 minutes or so.

Pictured: Damien Comer in action against David Byrne of Dublin in Croke Park on Saturday in what was the Galway man’s first appearance of the year. Photos: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile.