Shefflin hails value of win ahead of final league game
Published:
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Author: Our Reporter
~ 3 minutes read
From this week's Galway City Tribune
By Pádraic Ó Ciardha
In what has been a strange and toothless-enough National Hurling League Division One overall, this meeting of Galway and Clare in Ennis might go down as one of the odder matches.
On paper, Clare were the side with a shot at making a league semi-final and Galway were the ones with nothing to play for and that’s how it played out for the first 15 minutes with the Banner racing into a commanding lead.
After that, a switch somewhere flipped and it was Galway, and not without reason it must be said, who looked like the side with something to prove.
Speaking after his side’s 1-24 to 0-22 win, Galway manager Henry Shefflin did say that his side had nothing to lose from their short trip down to Cusack Park but, perhaps more honestly, he admitted that the win was “important psychologically” for the Tribesmen.
Even if Galway do dispatch Westmeath as expected in their final league game this Sunday (Mullingar, 1.45pm), it’s a result that would have done very little to cover up the deficiencies shown by potential consecutive losses to Clare, Limerick and Cork.
The five-week gap between the end of the league campaign and the beginning of the Leinster championship should run a little smoother after Galway’s performance at the weekend, however, a showing that looked a step above what had gone before, even allowing for the seemingly disinterested opposition.
Shefflin, for his part, was happy enough with the improvement in performance levels.
“I felt [the performance against] Cork wasn’t good and we didn’t respond well to the sending-off. I thought Limerick was better, but probably still wasn’t at the level that we require,” said the manager on his side’s recent struggles. “You’re hoping then [for a response] because three in a row is a bit of a ‘what are we doing’ kind of job.”
Galway made a pretty shocking start to the game against Clare, trailing 0-8 to 0-1 early on but Shefflin didn’t seem overly concerned at that stage, suggesting that his team had put in some hard sessions in Loughgeorge in the days in the lead-up to the game.
“Lads were probably getting up to the pace of it. We trained a couple of times this week and we’re probably pushing the boat a little bit to see, with us being out of the league, if you can push things on a little bit. You don’t know what everyone else is doing, but I thought the lads dragged themselves back into it well.”
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
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