Champions at Last!!!!
Mayo 0-13 Galway 0-12
30/04/01: Mayo’s hot streak continues.
Since the run of disappointments stretching back to Penal times or thereabouts was seen to end a fortnight ago with Crossmolina’s All-Ireland club final victory, the County has been on a roll. Latest up was yesterday’s Allianz National Football League final at Croke Park.
A poor match came to a gripping conclusion as Pat Holmes’s team hung on grimly while Connacht champions Galway desperately tried to pull back the one-point deficit. The favourites enthusiastically dug their own grave with a catalogue of squandered chances in the first half and having established what was looking like a decisive three-point lead towards the end of the third quarter, they promptly downed tools and failed to score for almost half an hour.
Despite being opened up frequently by the pace of the Galway attack, Mayo held on and slowly began to overhaul the deficit. As was the case with last week’s semi-final, substitutes made a big difference. James Nallen came in after half-time at centre back and made a significant impact and Maurice Sheridan kicked two of the comeback points.
This was a deserved win. Mayo showed tenacity and never stopped working – three times retrieving three-point margins – whereas Galway’s was a flashier, less consistent effort. By the end of the match, a number of familiar faces had returned. Tomás Mannion made only his second appearance since returning to the intercounty scene, Jarlath Fallon had his first run for the county since injuring his cruciate ligament last summer and Richie Fahy came in at corner back. Mannion and Fahy looked solid but Fallon was obviously just feeling his way.
Useful as it undoubtedly was to give a run-out to such players, Galway manager John O’Mahony admitted afterwards that the changes were less for reasons of rehabilitation than because “we were under pressure a bit”. All of the substitutes took the place of youngsters and cast some cold light on the likely composition of Galway’s championship team.
Before the start Crossmolina’s Tom Nallen came in at full back in place of Aidan Higgins with Kevin Cahill switching to the left corner and setting the scene for a major battle with Derek Savage. The Galway corner forward started in red-hot form.
In the opening three minutes, he kicked the first score of the match, was beaten to a one-on-one goal chance by the run of the ball and got fouled for a pointed free. Several times in the opening half he manoeuvred openings but couldn’t quite finish the chance. Yet all the while Cahill wasn’t losing heart in the struggle to mark him, principally because Galway insisted on firing high ball into the corner – placing someone of Savage’s less-than-imposing physique under pressure against the lanky Cahill.
The match’s tortoise-and-hare pattern started early with Galway running away with things, taking a rest while Mayo scrapped their way back into the match. During their less engaged periods, Galway came up with some frightening wides and missed opportunities, while Mayo let off some warning signals.
By the 21st minute, Mayo had caught up with Galway – David McDonagh getting his team’s first score from play. But it seemed like only a matter of time before Galway found their range and started to inflict some real damage. Padraig Joyce began to play himself into the game and worked some fine moves with Savage; still the scores didn’t come in profusion.
While not exactly free-scoring, Mayo’s forwards were eking out enough to keep pace. In injury-time at the end of the first half, Savage got on the end of another quick move but was blocked by Cahill and the ensuing ruck ended in a free out despite some Galway grievances about a possible penalty. The teams broke with a point in it, 0-8 to 0-7 for Galway. By now the Mayo defence was looking more assured. Marking was tighter and players swarmed back to cut off options. Even Michael Donnellan found space hard to come by.
His great, thumping deliveries helped initiate more fruitful attacks but Mayo were giving less and less away. In the 48th minutes, Donnellan set up a score for Joyce to push the team three points clear, 0-12 to 0-9. It was – astonishingly – to be their last score of the match. When the lengthy injury-time was taken into account, that added up to 28 minutes. Mayo’s recovery was hard earned.
James Nallen provided a platform and beside him Noel Connelly had an excellent game driving the team forward, snapping up loose ball and chipping in two excellent points as well as setting up the winning point. At centrefield David Brady put in an enormous amount of work and bore frequent physical punishment as a reward. Still Mayo made heavy duty of closing the deal. Sheridan and Connelly cut the margin to a point with an hour gone.
Pat Holmes later paid tribute to the gutsy nature of the comeback – strewn as it was with demoralising inaccuracies, each of which could have become a turning point had the team allowed heads to drop. Eventually and within the 67th minute the tables had turned. Sheridan kicked a 45 and Marty McNicholas came on to a ball from Noel Connelly and took what turned out to be the winning score.
As the clock ran down, Galway launched wave after wave of frantic attacks but they were undone by calm defending and inaccuracies. Savage made one last raid but kicked a wide. John Divilly was done for charging on a galloping foray from the back and finally Michael Donnellan’s huge, last minute launch was gathered by Ray Connelly. All over bar the shouting and there was quite a bit of that to come.
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