Sligo can realistically start looking upwards now
When the final whistle blew after over eight minutes of injury time in Thurles last Sunday it was met with both jubilation and relief by Sligo players, management and supporters.
The jubilation was for the two valuable away league points that were gained but there was huge relief as a ten- point lead was nearly squandered when Tipperary hit 1- 06 without reply only to fall by the narrowest of margins.
However, to put the result into perspective we travelled to Thurles last Sunday to play one of the teams of the year from last year when reaching the last four of the All- Ireland with our unenvious away form of one win from the last fourteen away matches but still came away with a fantastic win and performance.
Now with three points on the league table after playing the two pre- league favourites for promotion we can realistically start looking upwards as opposed to downwards with Antrim in Belfast next to come.
I spoke last week about how I felt the open spaces of Semple Stadium should suit us and this was how it worked out, with Niall Carew reinstating Kyle Cawley to the starting fifteen where his blistering pace could be utilised.
In addition to this, Carew took the chance of starting the inexperienced Paddy O’Connor at midfield where he certainly paid back the manager for the faith shown in him, with another very accomplished performance and looks like a player performing at this level for years.
Sligo started the game in whirl wind fashion hitting two fantastically worked and finished goals first from Kyle Cawley and then Niall Murphy within the first twenty minutes.
Sligo at this stage were playing with a huge hunger turning over Tipperary possession regularly with Keelan Cawley before being forced off with a nasty looking shoulder injury and Ross Donovan particularly prominent in this regard.
After his sabbatical last year, it is great to see Ross back in defence after being tried at midfield in previous games as I felt he was very instrumental in stabilising the Sligo defence when leading by example and creating a calmness in the back division.
To get anything from this game there was going to have to be a number of brilliant performances and I have to say I don’t think there was a single Sligo player that would have been disappointed with their outing.
However, I feel a number of players hit new heights, Johnny Kelly, who is relatively new at this level, covered every blade of grass and took the pressure off the Sligo defence many times when getting on the ball and breaking the line to create attacking situations at the other end.
Gerard O’Kelly lynch was another who I thought had his best ever game for Sligo not only for his defensive duties but the way he expended his energy bringing the ball from deep within his own half into the attacking third of the pitch and chipped in with two excellent scores himself.
Criostoir Davey is a player I always feel doesn’t get the credit he deserves as he performs a very thankless job in working back and putting in tackle after tackle chasing down players and then having to get forward when we are in possession, he is another player really who is growing into his game at the moment.
When a team has the quality of finishers that we have it’s all about the quality of ball into them, I feel there was a huge improvement from the week previous with Johnny Kelly and Mark Breheny very much to the fore in this regard feeding Murphy, Marren and Kyle Cawley.
Having said all the above its easy to look at wins with rose tinted glasses.
However, the reality is that at ten points up we should have killed off the game, it wasn’t that we didn’t get the chances as we could have won this game by fourteen or fifteen points with the way we were playing as they were also down to fourteen players for most of the second half.
We got sloppy in the last third when not completing our passes when we could have put the game well beyond doubt.
Tipperary however got lucky as well with the goal that brought them back into the game when Michael Quinlivan clearly handled the ball on the ground before getting up and coolly placing the ball into the corner of the net.
At this stage while playing with a player less, what they did have was more dangerous, it’s called ‘ momentum’ and only for the brave advancement off his line by Sligo goal- keeper Devaney, forcing the Tipperary player to blast over rather than under the bar which saved the game for Sligo……… roll on Belfast in two weeks’ time.