NHL Division 1A: Limerick 2-27 Galway 0-31
Who knows? When Limerick went 11 points clear in the first minute of the second half the game was devoid of everything that makes a story: tension, a plot, mystery. All hope of a twist had been abandoned. Forty minutes later, the team that are favourites to sweep the boards this year were clinging to the cliff’s edge with Galway stamping on their fingers.
By the final minute of stoppage time, all the undisputed verdicts from earlier in the evening were being fed through an emergency appeals process. Cathal Mannion’s shot for goal from a free was blocked by Kyle Hayes in a frenzied Limerick goalmouth and when Brian Concannon seized on the rebound Will O’Donoghue put himself in the path of the shot.
The siege resumed from the resultant 65, with Limerick bodies blockading the large parallelogram and the ball repelled by sheer weight of numbers. It wasn’t until the ball was ushered over the endline that Limerick were certain of their place in the League final against Cork, back in the Gaelic Grounds on Easter Sunday.
It was an extraordinary end to a bamboozling second half. Limerick seemed to fall asleep at the wheel, and by the time they woke up they were sliding towards the ditch. In an 11-minute spell in the middle of the second half Galway outscored Limerick by 0-9 to 0-1 and there was a stunning transfer of energy from green to maroon.
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On their good days, Limerick strangle teams by means of volume and efficiency. In the second half here, Galway dominated those metrics. They mustered 25 shots to Limerick’s 15, at a staggering conversion rate of 80 per cent. Limerick didn’t have their first wide of the second half until the 63rd minute, but that was partly because they had executed so few shots; it took them 26 minutes to muster their first eight points of the second half, and they scored just three times in the last 15 minutes of play, including stoppage time. In a reversal of their usual demeanour, Limerick were reactive and frazzled.
John Kiely, as you can imagine, was keen to take the good from it: “Do I regret what happened? From a learning perspective, after the game, having got two points, definitely not. Just hugely proud of the way we held our line in the last five minutes. Obviously it was uncomfortable, but there are moments that you have to stand up and you have to make those blocks, hooks, flicks.”
For Galway, though, this was arguably their most nourishing performance of a restorative season so far. They made three substitutions at half-time and another early in the second and all of them made an impact. The outstanding Darragh Neary, Colm Molloy and Concannon scored six points from play between them, but nobody did more to change the momentum of the game than Jason Rabbitte, Galway’s hugely exciting young full forward.
Just like in the second half of the game against Cork a few weeks ago, Rabbitte drifted to a position just behind the Galway half-forward line, and from there he orchestrated the attack. He scored three terrific second-half points, to add to one he scored early in the game, but his fingerprints were on a handful of other scores.
Having been swamped in the middle third for much of the first half, Galway established a foothold in that sector and ran at Limerick. Cork have demonstrated repeatedly in the last couple of years that the Limerick defence is not nearly as resistant to pace as it used to be and once Galway opened up running channels, Limerick suffered.
Galway brought the deficit down to two points with three minutes of normal time remaining and then were hit by a sucker punch. Adam English’s long shot struck an upright and Aaron Gillane pounced on the rebound to flash the ball to the net.
Galway’s response though was deeply impressive, as they reeled off the next three points to put the game back in the melting pot. In the middle of that surge Darach Fahy made a point-blank save from Donncha Ó Dálaigh when the Limerick sub was clean through.
At half-time this turn of events was unimaginable, even though Galway had made a blistering start, finding the target with their first five shots. But then their productivity collapsed, and they scored just once in a withering 19-minute spell. Galway were being squeezed on their own puck-outs and were bleeding turnovers in their own half.
The most expensive of them led to Limerick’s first goal when the outstanding Cathal O’Neill intercepted a sideline cut and galloped 50 metres, untouched, to score.
That put Limerick 1-11 to 0-7 in front, and they stretched further ahead to lead by 1-16 to 0-9 at the break. They were still 11 points clear seven minutes into the second half and apparently in a position of comfort.
Does this say more about Galway or Limerick? The league refuses to answer those questions.
LIMERICK: N Quaid; S Finn, D Lanigan, B Nash; D Byrnes, W O’Donoghue, K Hayes; A English (0-4), C Lynch; G Hegarty (0-3), A O’Connor (0-5, 3f), C O’Neill (1-6); A Gillane (1-4), S O’Brien, D Reidy (0-2).
Subs: D Ó Dálaigh (0-2) for O’Brien (h-t); Hurley (0-1) for Lynch (40-43 mins, blood sub); H Flanagan for Hegarty (55); M Casey for Nash (62); P O’Donovan for O’Connor (64); C Coughlan for Byrnes (69).
GALWAY: D Fahy; J Ryan, C Trayers, D Morrissey; R Glennon (0-1), P Mannion (0-1), C Fahy; TJ Brennan, C Daniels; T Monaghan (0-2), C Mannion (0-4), T Killeen (0-1); C Whelan (0-2), J Rabbitte (0-4), A Niland (0-10, 8f).
Subs: S Morgan for Morrissey, D Neary (0-3) for Fahy, C Molloy (0-2) for Brennan (all h-t); B Concannon (0-1) for Monaghan (47 mins); S Linnane for Glennon (66).
Referee: Chris Mooney (Dublin).
