Dylan McHugh describes it as his best miss ever. He mightn’t be so proud if the end result was different, or the turning point in Galway’s safe passage to Sunday’s Connacht football final.
His memorable miss came midway through the second half of last month’s semi-final against Roscommon, at Dr Hyde Park, the home team up at that stage courtesy of Ciaráin Murtagh’s goal. McHugh made one of his bursting runs from wing back before taking aim at the target for a point.
McHugh was about to put his head in his hands when his shot rebounded off the upright but Damien Comer pounced on the rebound and rifled into the net, part of Galway’s 1-3 without reply which ultimately saw them home.
“I got a bit of slagging for it,” he admits. “They were saying Damo [Comer] was well clued in, because they knew I’d miss. It was the best miss I ever had . . .
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“We would have just reviewed the game as a whole, it was five or 10 minutes that as a team we probably weren’t happy with. Turnovers that we weren’t happy with, defensive shape maybe just off it.
“I suppose that can happen at the start of a half, Roscommon probably needed to get back into the game, they put everything into it, we just probably didn’t respond to it as well as we would have liked.”
Sunday’s opposition are a slightly different proposition, Galway widely fancied to overcome Sligo, contesting their first Connacht final since 2015 (when they lost to Mayo).
McHugh however needs little reminder of what happened in the 2007 showdown, when a similarly fancied Galway team, with current manager Pádraic Joyce still playing, lost 1-10 to 0-12, Sligo winning only their third Connacht title, after a 32-year wait.
McHugh, a then nine-year-old, still has ample recall: “I just remember going to the game, when you’re younger you just assume that Galway are always going to win, a bit naïve I suppose, looking at the scoreboard wondering why Galway weren’t winning.
“I remember the Eamonn O’Hara goal quite well, we were behind that goal, and, yeah, that was kind of it.
“Winning a Connacht title is something that we set out to try and achieve at the start of the year. There aren’t too many of them floating around our dressingroom anyway. We’ll be more than happy if we can get over the line on Sunday and win it.”
McHugh would also be quite familiar with many of the current Sligo players, previously crossing paths at minor and then under-21 level.
“They’re very good footballers. We drew with them at minor and went to a replay, and they could easily have beaten us. It was the same at Under-21 when we beat them after extra-time.
“We know the challenge that we’ll be facing. They have nothing to lose and they have serious momentum coming into the game.”
If they overcome that challenge, Galway will go into Group Two of the round-robin phase, only that’s not on their radar just yet, McHugh at work in Tuam (with Valeo, the car camera company) when the draw was made on Monday: “It’s not something that we can let distract us now at this stage.”
For McHugh, speaking at the AIB announcement of their five-year sponsorship extension of the football, camogie and club championship, Galway’s ultimate aim is to get back into the All-Ireland final, last year’s defeat still fresh on his mind too.
“Young lads that have come in have been fantastic. Johnny McGrath has come in and he’s been fantastic. Cian Hernon, the lads have fitted in brilliantly. It’s great. With players like Seán Kelly and John Daly, they’d be helping them integrate into the team as simply as possible. The lads have been great, fantastic really.
“Then of course Peter [Cooke], John Maher and Ian [Burke]) coming in has just strengthened that even more. It makes training even better, and obviously makes the squad a lot stronger on game day. On paper at the moment anyway, it looks good.”
Since coming into the senior panel in 2021, McHugh’s own experience with Corofin has proved telling too.
“Because we were successful with the club, we’d a lot of good lads playing and a lot of lads that you could have learned a lot from. So, I would have learned a lot from Liam Silke, even Kieran [Molloy], so that would have helped me when I went into the Galway set-up, to have those lads to look at.
“While I was in Corofin, I wasn’t really looking in over the wall wondering what the Galway lads are doing, because I had the two lads in the club that would have helped me along. I suppose for confidence anyway, to have a bit of success nationally would have given you a bit of confidence to go on and play for Galway.”
