Galway  0-24

Wexford 2-12

IN jig time all our pre-match notions about how this Leinster senior hurling championship round-robin tie at Pearse Stadium on Saturday would unfold and lay in tatters.

In less than four minutes, outsiders Wexford had hit the Galway net twice to throw the cat amongst the pigeons. The visitors couldn’t have dreamed of a better start, and you could immediately sense the unease among the home fans in Salthill.

Backed by the wind, Wexford had given themselves the ideal platform to spring a surprise, but their injury-hit forces – key players Lee Chin and Damien Reck were late withdrawals – just didn’t possess the quality to take advantage. By half-time, they were only level; by the end, they were six points adrift and were lucky the deficit wasn’t much more.

A total of 14 wides underlined Galway’s sloppy finishing, mostly in the final quarter when ironically the outcome was no longer up for debate and the pressure was off. To be winning All-Irelands, you need to be a lot more ruthless.

Yet, Galway’s debut in the 2023 championship was mostly positive. When they built up a head of steam approaching the break and sustained it for most of the third quarter, Wexford couldn’t live with them. In that period, the Tribesmen amassed a dozen points to just a solitary reply.

On an evening when player-of-the-match Evan Niland made a mockery of the unfair characterisation that he is ‘just a quality free-taker’, Galway will be content to have survived such a terrible opening without hitting top gear for long stretches of a contest which will hardly live long in the memory.

Wexford came into this fixture under a cloud. Apart from their poor form in the league, long-serving goalkeeper Mark Fanning had quit the panel ahead of the trip west. Their mood wouldn’t have been helped by the absence of centre back Reck and centre forward Chin, fueling fears the Slaneysiders would be wiped off the field.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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