Galway duly retraced the steps that brought them their two most recent All-Irelands. Manager Pádraic Joyce played in both of those teams and was understandably pleased to have guided his county back to a first All-Ireland final since that last success in 2001.
In both 1998 and 2001, they overcame Derry in the semi-final and have now repeated that. Did it bring back memories of ‘98?
“It’s panning out that way. We beat Mayo away as well and we had Roscommon in the final. We beat Derry in an (All-Ireland) semi-final that time as well. I hope it stays going. It would be great.”
[ Damien Comer’s magic finish beats Derry and announces Galway’s returnOpens in new window ]
On Saturday in Croke Park, his team calmly absorbed the early pressure from the Ulster champions, took all of 21 minutes to register a first score but eased level and eventually pulled away without fuss. Joyce said the lack of tempo in the early stages almost surprised them.
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“In the first half you can try to get the lads ready for whatever scenarios you think but we didn’t think it would be that defensive or slow. We were a little slow getting going ourselves. We were lacking energy.
“It was extremely humid out there. Believe it or not, lads found it hard to get their second wind. We came in at half-time four-four. In the second half we said we would be a bit more brave, show a bit more energy going forward.
“In fairness we did. We tagged a few points on after half-time. The goal then was a crucial turning point by Damien (Comer). He turned his man really, really well. It was a great ball in by John Daly. From then on, we were five or six points up with a cushion. It was easier to manage the game — the lads managed the game really well.”
Comer lit up the second with his trademark bustle. Taking on one of Derry’s premium defenders Brendan Rogers, he struck two goals, which settled the match. The second had been threatening all afternoon, as the Ulster team’s goalkeeper Odhran Lynch had been demonstrating a taste of adventure that took up the field on several occasions.
Galway were dilatory about making him pay the full price on turnovers until the 64th minute when centre back Daly booted the ball over the retreating defence into Comer who, one-on-one with Rogers, simply lobbed his shot into the empty net.
The scorer recounted his thoughts afterwards.
“I said, get it on target anyway. If it hit the crossbar and came back out I would have been sickened because that would have been the worst case scenario. I probably put too much on it, I’d have gathered it was a dribbler but it was just adrenaline in that situation as well. Thankfully it went under the crossbar.”
Derry manager Rory Gallagher came in with his hands up, metaphorically.
“We were beaten by a better team, no doubt about that. I suppose the way the game panned out, I thought we were very good and controlled a lot of the first 20 minutes or whatever.
“We would like to have been more ahead than we were. And we were probably very disappointed to be level at half time, albeit Galway had turned the direction of the game and were starting to get the measure of us.
“Very disappointed, I suppose at the fact that we left a few chances behind us under not that much pressure but also with the amount of ball we had in the first half that we didn’t put up more of a score. We settled really well, no doubt about that, without a lot of our main players playing close to the level they had. Galway still put out their stall what way they were going to play once we got the ball.
“That was fine and we kind of pre-empted that that they would not mark a number of our players. We just didn’t really rip into them the way we would have wanted too. Obviously the first three points were very good but we should have ripped into them far more and that was very disappointing.”
Due to a malfunction that deprived Galway of a score before half-time, the Hawkeye score detection system was stood down for the second half. The GAA announced that it will not be used for Sunday’s semi-final between Dublin and Kerry.
A 45 deemed wide was restored to the scoreboard, leaving the teams level at 0-4 each before the second half started. Neither manager raised any concerns about the issue, Gallagher accepting that if it had been a point, it had been a point.
Joyce was asked would he be attending the Dublin-Kerry semi-final on Sunday.
“I might. If I get a ticket, I’ll definitely go.”
