Finnerty inflicts brutal blow on heartbroken Sligo
Sligo's Paul McNamara reflects on his side's defeat to a Galway team that led for the first time when landing the final score of the game in second-half stoppage time. Pictures: INPHO
Sligo supporters among the disappointingly small attendance didn’t arrive believing their side would win, only hoping for signs that the gap between them and the big dogs might be shrinking. They left Markievicz Park barely able to understand how their team wasn’t bound for the Connacht final.
There had been no contest when the teams met in the Connacht final 12 months previous, with Galway leisurely winning by 14 points. When Rob Finnerty palmed in a Galway goal with the very last score of Saturday’s provincial semi-final however, it gave his side the lead for the first and only time. Two point winners, Padraic Joyce’s players had somehow avoided a banana skin and were still standing.
Sligo had got so much right and repelled various attempts by Galway to overwhelm them but one can’t help but pinpoint the loss of Cian Lally to injury, in the 62nd minute and Sligo 0-14 to 0-11 ahead, as a significant turning point. The Drumcliffe/Rosses Point man had caused the Galway defence endless problems with his direct running but it was his brutally blunt – but fair – stopping by an opposing defender on another such run that would end Lally’s afternoon, after which Sligo failed to score again and Galway struck 1-2 to steal victory.
Nine different players scored for Tony McEntee’s Division 3 side against supposed All-Ireland contenders. The quality of the performance surprised even the manager, he admitted afterwards. Sligo will, however, reflect on a number of missed chances which prevented them from strengthening their position on the scoreboard, with their wide count reaching 11 by full-time.
The first-half couldn’t have unfolded in a much more positive manner for the locals, leading from pillar to post and seeing their opponents squander a couple of excellent goal chances. Cein Darcy and Jack McCabe were Galway’s guilty parties, both inside the opening 14 minutes, blasting badly wide from close range. But maybe the sheer fact they had created the opportunities sewed a sense in Galway heads that victory was going to come easy. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Sligo scored the game’s opening four points through Nathan Mullen, Niall Murphy, a free, Cian Lally and Canice Mulligan before Shane Walsh, set up by his team captain Sean Kelly, finally got the visitors up and running on the scoreboard. When Patrick O’Connor became the home side’s fifth different scorer by pointing in the 17th minute, it represented something of a dream start for McEntee’s team, and they might even have moved six clear but in the space of 60 seconds Sean Carrabine and Niall Murphy missed opportunities that were well within their range.
There was a sense of foreboding then, when Galway reeled off three points – through Dylan McHugh, Johnny Heaney and Rob Finnerty – to move within one, after 22 minutes. Finnerty also negated a point by Paul McNamara, but when O’Connor, one of three late additions to the Sligo line-up, fired over his second and third points of the half, to leave the scoreboard reading 0-8 to 0-5 after 33 minutes, the inevitability of Galway flicking a switch and displaying the differences between Division 1 and Division 3 teams was definitely dwindling.
This was reinforced in stoppage time when a Cein Darcy point for the visitors was negated by Alan McLoughlin, the creative part of Sligo’s move coming from the combination of Eddie McGuinness, Canice Mulligan and Niall Murphy.
Sligo led 0-9 to 0-6 at half-time and despite Rob Finnerty, who carried a serious threat throughout, picking off his third point inside 60 seconds of the restart, the Yeats County needed only four minutes to grow their lead to four points. McGuinness launched a ball inside to Niall Murphy who pointed the mark while Mikey Gordon was afforded too much room by a backtracking Galway defence and punished superbly off his left boot from 40-metres.
The introduction by Galway, during the third quarter, of Damien Comer and their withdrawal of Shane Walsh, both who came into the fixture off the back of lengthy injury layoffs, were significant moments in their own right. Comer had two points to his name within five minutes while a free by Finnerty helped close the gap to the minimum, 0-11 to 0-10, after 46 minutes.
But Sligo refused to yield and came again. Alan McLoughlin doubled his tally to see the hosts equal what they had scored against Galway in last year’s Connacht final, with 25 minutes still remaining. Then, McLoughlin’s clever cross-field delivery was key to Sean Carrabine becoming his side’s latest scorer, with Sligo entering the final quarter three points to the good.
They did need ‘keeper Aidan Devaney to divert a poorly struck goal effort by Damien Comer past the post but with Finnerty’s latest point negated by Murphy’s first from play, and Heaney, from a ’45, Comer, McHugh and Darcy all striking wides for Galway, the prospect of an upset was growing increasingly real.
Sligo’s difficulty, however, was that Niall Murphy’s point, in the 58th minute, would turn out to be their last of the game. The Coolera/Strandhill full-forward hit two late wides, including one from 20-metres, after which points by substitute Kieran Molloy and Cein Darcy brought the visitors to within one of Sligo as the game entered stoppage time.
One of the allotted four minutes had elapsed when Sligo full-back Eddie McGuinness coughed up possession 45-metres from goal and Comer and Heaney immediately pounced to set-up Finnerty for the simplest of back post finishes past Devaney.
Sligo lacked the invention thereafter to retrieve their situation and the defeat surely ranks as one of the cruellest ever inflicted upon them. They should, however, on the evidence of Saturday, dust themselves down and embrace the Tailteann Cup as one that’s within their capabilities of winning.
