Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Revenge in Tribe minds this season admits Kev
KEVIN WALSH insisted revenge for last year rather than Super Eights qualification was Galway’s ambition after the Tribesmen joined Mayo on 46 Connacht title victories.
Walsh’s side were beaten by Roscommon by nine points in last year’s provincial decider but 12 months on showed character to come back from a poor first half at Dr Hyde Park to beat the same opposition by four points in a 0-16 to 2-6 triumph.
“Today was about today,” said Walsh. “It was important, particularly after last year. I won’t go behind the curtain on that – but we really felt we just didn’t perform last year.
“I know Roscommon were very good but a nine point defeat isn’t where this team are at. So it was important here to show who we are.
“If we were beaten by a better team on the day, so be it.”
The Rossies only managed 1-1 in the second half, failing to score from play, as Shane Walsh (below) produced his best display yet for Galway in front of a sell-out 18,864 crowd. With the other three provincial finals on next weekend, Galway are the first team into the new Super 8s format and are guaranteed at least three more Championship games.
“Now we’re the first team to make it to the Super 8s so maybe it’s a bit of legacy in itself,” said boss Walsh.
“At the same time, we’re still young, we’re still trying to learn from all these teams. We’ll have a few weeks’ break, which is nice – back to club football at the weekend.
“These lads just want to get better.
“We had a bad first half but we got better on the second half and we’ll assess that better on Tuesday night,” he added.