You may have caught a glimpse of the deferred coverage on TG4 of Galway's win over Dublin as you put the kettle on after coming in from Ballinascreen. If you did, you'll have seen a
n impressive performance from the Tribesmen. There's nothing like a comprehensive victory over the Dubs to put a team on the 'radar'. Usually this is a bad thing, and there'll be pundits and journalists now tipping Galway to win all sorts.Liam Sammon's team played very well in patches, especially in the first-half, with Padraig Joyce back to his mercurial best. The Galway Advertiser was left drooling over the Killererin man's performance:
"'Genius' is not too strong a word to describe some of his interventions last Sunday. His vision, composure on the ball, and left foot are something to be admired and cherished. The finesse of some of his passes has to be seen to be believed."High praise. Although hardly surprising, as the same report describes the Galway performance as "epic" and "lyrical". Seriously lads, feet on the ground.
The comfortable nature of Galway's victory might have surprised a few. But when taking a quick glance at the respective forward units, the final scoreline is suddenly explained. Joyce is not the only man opposing defences have to worry about. Players like the in-form Micheal Meehan, Sean Armstrong and Cormac Bane are well capable of racking up the scores. Five of Galway's six forwards notched the 3-12 between them. Meanwhile, over in the blue corner, Bernard Brogan was left fighting a lonely battle.
Dublin could be facing a difficult fight to cling to their newly-found Division 1 status. Westmeath, last year's Division 2 champions, would be the early favourites to join them. The Westmeath Independent struggled to find any positives in the Lake county's 14-point defeat to Derry, claiming that "the second-half performance was a throwback to the dim and distant past to which none of us want to return". That's considerable pessism, right there.
Moving North, and that adorable pairing of Tyrone and Kerry provided one or two talking points in Omagh on Sunday.The Kerryman described the game as 'The good, the bad
and the ugly' and it's hard to argue with this assessment of a game that threatened to spill into something very ugly indeed. With regards to the football, Kerry's attack threatened to run amok in the first-half with Gooch Cooper looking particularly lively.Tyrone were handicapped by the absence of Stephen O'Neill, but they steadied as the game wore on, with the introduction of Conor Gormley helping to nullify Kerry's prowess. The win for Jack O'Connor's side is largely meaningless; he knows what is yet to come. At the moment it looks like both sides are on another early-autumn collision course; and Tyrone, despite defeat, have a menace about them that has been lacking when they've defended Sam in the past.
The benchmark for the would-be challengers won't be dropping any time soon.
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