Galway can kick on after conquering Kerry
This is what happens when men meet boys on a battlefield
IIt may well prove to be the case, but one thing that the teenager’s ground finish could not do was colour the grim reality that this is what happens when men meet boys on a battlefield.
The scale of this win for Galway is best reflected in a single stat — this was their first Championship win over the Kingdom since 1965.
And it was not as if they were strangers passing each other in the night over the last 53 years — Galway’s win-less streak had extended to seven games and infected every generation including even that of two-time All-Ireland winner Kevin Walsh.
Of course, it could be argued that, when you finally get to put down a county that has haunted you for that long, it is advisable to drive a wooden stake through their heart rather than seek to bleed them to death with a flesh wound.
That is the joy/flaw of this new format. Galway move forward to Newbridge emboldened by an even greater sense of purpose while Kerry will point their faces for Clones with a menacing sense of grievance fuelling their march.
The latter game will at least road-test to some degree the theory that Kerry’s status in the game is owed in part to their mollycoddled existence in the Munster Championship.
The question has often been asked how would they fare if they had to put it all on the line up north with no safety net in place?
Guess what, we get to find out next Sunday and deepening Kerry worry lines is the fact they will face in Monaghan the kind of structured defence which was beyond them to puncture here.
But, even if the nature of this format is such that one game cannot in itself be defining, it can still serve to illuminate.
What we learned here is that this season’s form book and this Galway team can be trusted.
They have made a habit under Kevin Walsh of winning big games ugly — as Mayo will testify over the past three years — and this was a victory squeezed from the same blueprint.
What impressed even more than how they bullied Kerry was how stoic they were in their belief.
And it wasn’t as if they were not given reasons to doubt themselves on a day when they kicked a dozen wides and dropped a couple of more painfully short.
That was the only reason that a pitiful spectacle retained a sense of intrigue for so long, but when the winning line sprung into sight here Galway just surged clear.
Their dominance around the middle was key as they attacked Shane Murphy’s restarts with relish — by the end, his kick-outs had been turned over 10 times (including three over the sideline) — but they also revealed that in a season where panel will be king that they have a bench that can sting with the best.
The teams were level at 0-8 apiece when Adrian Varley came onto the pitch and the timing of the Galway surge was not just coincidental as he kicked two critical points.
In the next 14 minutes, when the game was in the melting pot, Galway outscored Kerry by 1-5 to 0-1 to leave no room for questions.
Another sub, Patrick Sweeney, coming in for Damien Comer (who endured a testing afternoon), was on hand deep in injury time to fire the ball to the net, after seeing his initial effort brilliantly saved by Shane Murphy.
At the time, it felt like a decorative score — it put Galway seven clear — but as events transpired it was the unlikely difference between the teams.
The real difference, though, was out the field where Kerry simply could not cope with the ferocity and intensity of Galway’s work-rate.
This was particularly true of their defence which reduced Kerry’s much hyped attack into a solo effort which did not extend beyond Clifford — who nailed 1-5, 1-4 from play.
The likes of Sean Andy O’Ceallaigh, Eoghan Kerin and Cathal Sweeney led the way for Galway, setting the bar which the rest responded to.
It spread to every line in the field and, while the Galway attack malfunctioned in its primary duty — an accusation that could hardly be levelled at Ian Burke whose cerebral contribution extended far beyond the two points he scored — they worked so hard that Kerry’s running game never got to stretch its legs.
With the empty stadium, slick pitch, persistent drizzle and defensive mind-sets providing the laboratory conditions for a stinker, the game was a tough watch.
Indeed, it is so hard to paint in words how awful the opening half was, it is best done in numbers.
Galway led by a point at the break (0-6 to 0-5), with their halfdozen scores from 16 attempts at the posts. They still deserved to lead — if only on the basis that Kerry were the ones dancing to a dodgy tune. N THE end, Kerry’s comfort was so cold that all they were left nursing was the hope that David Clifford’s late goal might just throw them a mathematical lifeline down the road.
Galway ruled the middle third with such authority that they enjoyed absolute control of their restarts — goalkeeper Ruari Lavelle saw just one of his kick-outs turned over.
It crawled along at such a snail’s pace that, after 31 minutes, the teams were locked together at 0-3 apiece, and in that kind of armwrestle the men were always going to prevail.